Specters and Swindlers
by D3athrav3n92
Summary: If Stanley had known that his prison bunkmate was as stupidly crazy as he seemed, Stan would have gone on a massacre, rather than the pickpocketing that landed him in the minimum security prison in the first place. Too bad one Danny Fenton had other ideas.
1. Chapter 1

**So, mostly doing this in an attempt to break down the wall of writer's block and procrastination, in the hopes that I'll find motivation for my other stories. Also, because I just finished Gravity Falls and I'm FREAKING OUT RIGHT NOW I NEED AN OUTLET THAT ISN'T MASS EFFECT BECAUSE THAT'S _WORSE_**

 **Plus, there's not enough GOOD Danny Phantom and Gravity Falls fanfics out there right now. So I intend to change that. Somewhat. With my single, measly 800-plus word fic. Yeah. Sounds like a plan.**

 **Anyways, idea inspired by Vitaliciouscreations and her fic, "This Page of Secrets." Really liked the idea of Danny pretty much growing up with Stan, and the idea seized me and ran off into the sunset like an anime panty thief. So here we are.**

* * *

 **Specters and Swindlers**

 **By D3athrav3n92**

They met at a prison.

Thankfully, it wasn't a maximum security or intense correctional prison, and Stanley Filman Pines wasn't arrested for anything more severe than pickpocketing and fraud. So, Stan spent most of his time in 1976 fighting off fellow inmates, staring at his cell bars, and talking with his "roommate."

Said roommate was strange, in Stan's honest opinion. Shaggy black hair, blue, blue eyes, and skinny frame. At first, Stan thought that his fellow inmate would be a complete pushover. But surprisingly, there were muscles underneath that wiry frame, and spades and spades of determination that went hand-in-hand with overwhelming cheerfulness and kindness.

The young man looked barely eighteen, and was a nice guy, despite being in a correctional facility. How he wound up in a prison facility, Stan had no idea. The guy was amazingly tight-lipped about the whole thing, and he seemed to _truly_ enjoy prison life. Or rather, Stan's experience of prison life.

"Hey, Stan!" Shaggy, pitch black hair and piercing blue eyes peered down over the edge of the bunk, eyes curling in amusement, and Stan scowled back up at his "roommate." "Cafeteria's serving Stew Surprise, wanna find out what the mystery meat is?'

"No," Stan said shortly. More of a tanned face and dimpled smile appeared over the edge of the bunk, and his roommate grinned.

"Come on! You only have like three days left in this place anyways, why not have a little fun before you go?" his roommate wheedled.

"Why are you here?" Stan demanded, sitting upright and the face reared back, the smile disappearing completely. "Was it theft? Assault? Vandalism? Decided to bring back underground donkey fights?"

Blue eyes widened. "Those _existed_?"

Stan coughed and slouched a little. "Just an example, kid."

The "kid" pouted. "C'mon, man, I'm in prison! Definitely not a kid."

"Yeah, yeah," Stan sighed dismissively, and he leaned back against his hard pillow. "I'm being serious, kid."

The playfulness vanished from that tanned face, and in an amazing feat of ability, the teen flipped off the top bunk and settled down next to Stan.

He was silent for a moment, and to Stan, it seemed unnerving to see the kid so serious and suddenly…much _older_.

"Because I had nowhere else to go," he sighed, and Stan swallowed.

Memories of a dark street, a duffel bag, a door slamming shut, and a glimpse of a guilty, yet angry face in the upstairs window flashed through Stan's mind, and Stan exhaled loudly.

"Yeah," he muttered. He scratched at the stubble on his chin and slung a sympathetic arm across the teen's shoulder. "I understand the feeling."

They sat in silence for a long moment, before Stan cleared his throat.

"Listen, kid," he said awkwardly. "If you're not here for something _too_ terrible, maybe I can, y'know, bail you out. Once I scrounge up the money. Because you're too nice to be stuck in here."

The teen was silent for a long moment, before he burst out laughing. Immediately, Stan reared up, offended. "I was just tryin' to be nice, kid, but if you're going to be like _that,_ then -!"

"No, no, no, I'm not laughing at you!" the teen chuckled, flashing a bright grin at his companion. "I'm not here because I _have_ to be!"

Stan stared at him. "…What?"

The teen fiddled his thumbs, and tilted his head, his black hair flopping with the motion. "When I said I have nowhere to go, I _literally_ mean, I don't have anywhere to go. I mostly just picked this place because it seemed interesting. Because _you_ seemed interesting."

Stan spluttered, completely flabbergasted. "I-interesting? P-picked this –" He cut himself off, before he sprang to his feet and roared, "Look, this isn't some sort of – _vacation home_ – I mean – WHAT?!"

The teen laughed again at Stan's reaction, and said cheerily, "I've never been arrested – wait, no, scratch that." He paused and scrunched up his face in thought. "Wait, does that time with the Guys in White count?" he muttered, half-under his breath, half-not. "Well, either way, I was mostly just screwing around right now, and suddenly – well," he amended with a laugh, "I met you. You're really entertaining, y'know?"

Stan gawked at his roommate. "I'm what?"

The teen laughed again, and drummed his fingers against the metal bed frame. "You're in here because you _swindled_ people, you have like, five fake aliases, and I watched you talk a guy into giving you the rest of his toothpaste and convince him that it was " _healthier_ for him!" You're one of the most interesting guys I've met in the past fifty years!"

 _That_ threw Stan for a loop. "W-what -?"

The black-haired, blue-eyed _teen_ simply grinned at him, stood, and to Stan's utmost shock, began to float off the ground.

"Danny Fenton, or Danny Phantom," the teen said, and Stan watched, astounded, as a white ring appeared around his middle, and spread across his body. Orange prison slacks turned into a sleek, black suit, with "DP" emblazoned across the front in bold, white letters. Blue eyes turned into glowing green, and dark, shaggy hair turned into snowy, fluffy white.

"Dimension-hopper and half-ghost, at your service!"

* * *

 **So, I'm going to be trying something new. Short updates, more like a vignette series that will be updated sporadically. Not abandoning other stories, in case people were wondering.**

 **Anyways, leave me some feedback or whatever, and let me know what you think! Also, if you're interested in other stuff that I've written, check out the link attached to the bottom of my Author's Bio. It'll be a fun read, I swear.**

 **Posted and Updated: 08/30/2016,** **9:34 PM**


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks for the warm feedback and reception! Really appreciate it! Anyways, fair warning - probably sporadic updates because my life is usually crazy busy and I don't have much time to sit down and write anymore, unfortunately. :(**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

 **Chapter 2**

It had been fifty years since eighteen-year-old Danny was accidentally transported to another dimension by his parents.

" _Suck the house into a parallel dimension ONE TIME, and you just can't let it go, can you?"_ his father once complained to his mother, back when Danny was first discovering his ghost powers. _That_ experience had been a strange one, filled with all kinds of weird moments (" _Hi, I'm Matthew Fenton, just call me Mattie! And this is my wife, Jaqueline, or Jack for short. Have you met our kids, Jeffrey and Danielle?")._

Regardless, that was an experience that Danny wasn't willing to repeat.

So when he found himself in the middle of the Great Depression and _thoroughly_ glad he had ghost powers (his moral standard about not stealing might have slipped. Just a bit. In the face of starvation), he found himself incredibly angry at his parents.

And yet, oddly fond at the same time. Of _course_ his parents would somehow figure out a way to strand him in the middle of Florida during the Great Depression. It was _so_ silly, so random, and so, _so_ _aggravating –_

But he still loved them. He saw the expressions of horror and terror when the portal accidentally activated while he was bringing them their lunch, and saw their mad, _desperate_ scramble to grab him before he was sucked in.

In the end, though, it was useless; he spent ten years on this side of the dimension searching for a way back home, to no avail.

Two years later, Danny discovered that he _wasn't aging_.

It was while he was freshening up in an empty motel room. He remembered thinking, ironically, that it'd been twelve years in this dimension, and then looking into the mirror after washing his face. And realizing with a start, that he looked the same as he did when he was eighteen. Same mature and sharpened face, but no wrinkles or worry lines – something he surely would have gotten while wondering whether he would manage to scrounge up enough money for food, or steal it.

And he realized with a sinking heart, he would never be able to remain in one place for very long. He would never be able to instead live in a small town, or in a city, and grow up like humans were intended to grow. He would have to move from town to town, to avoid suspicion, to avoid _the government_ and _lab experiments_ and –

He would stay young, while the world kept going. It was a sad and lonely realization.

Eventually, Danny used his ghost powers to move between states, and tried to keep a low profile, even as the United States began gearing up for war.

Four years later, Pearl Harbor was attacked, and Danny found himself drafted into the US Army, something he was more than willing to do. The more people he helped, the more people he _saved_ , the better off he felt. And _that_ ended up being a nightmare that Danny didn't think he would ever be able to recover from.

He cried like a baby on April 11th, 1945, at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, after he came across a two men hugging each other in death with terror on their faces, on top of a pile of emaciated corpses that contained men, women, and _children_. He knew from his history classes that, logically, the concentration camps were a horror beyond everything else; that they were the absolutely worst part about World War II.

It was nothing compared to the real thing.

After the war, Danny was a mess. Oftentimes, his control would slip, and he would accidentally sink through the floor, or his fingers would light up with an unearthly green light in the middle of a grocery run. Sometimes, he woke in the middle of the night, screaming and feeling a ghostly wail bubble up in his throat. In the end, it got so bad, he moved to the middle of nowhere, somewhere far up north in the middle of Montana. It took him _years_ to recover from that ordeal. Almost twenty years, in fact.

Eventually, he took to wandering, trying to find something to occupy his time, looking for somebody to _help_. He spent many years wandering the US, stopping crime, helping everyday people, and trying to find something to _do_.

And then, Stanley Pines stumbled into his life.

In 1976, he watched the man get arrested, chuckling at the excuses that the man made each step of the way.

"It wasn't me! I was organizing decorations for my dog's birthday!"

"I accidentally drank ipecac and have been stuck vomiting in the toilet all day!"

"I couldn't have done the crime, officer! I was running away from an escaped buffalo at the nearby safari reserve!"

Interest peaked, Danny followed the cops, watched the jury process, and eventually, followed Stan into the prison. There, he easily slipped into the prison, used a clone or two to warn him of approaching guards (and thank goodness security cameras weren't entirely standardized yet, especially in Mexico), and spent the next year as Stan's roommate, while to the other prisoners, Danny Fenton was a literal ghost.

But Danny didn't care. In his opinion, Stan's frankness and attitude was _hilarious_. As jaded and frank as Sam Manson, but wild and imaginative as Tucker Foley. And it was refreshing, after fifty long years of missing his two best friends.

But now, Danny had to resist the urge to laugh, especially when Stan shot him a dirty glare through the barbed wire fence of the prison.

"You're dead meat," Stan grumbled as soon as the prison gate blared and opened, allowing Stan to step out into freedom. "You _had_ to spring that on me, then vanish for the next three days?" Hmm, seemed like Stan took the whole "half-ghost thing" pretty well, after he stopped swearing up a blue streak inside their prison cell.

Danny shrugged, and tugged on the beanie that covered his hair. "I had to be a ghost." He flashed a smirk at the groan that exploded from Stan, and nodded at a nearby car. "Come on, let's get outta here."

Stan eyed the car, a black Chrysler Valiant. "You, uh, know how to drive?"

Danny rolled his eyes, and easily slid into the driver's seat. "Well, it took me a while to get used to driving stick-shift again, because most cars become automated in what, 1980?" Danny paused as he started the car engine, then nodded sagely to himself. "That sounds right."

"You're really something, y'know that?" Stan complained, taking a seat beside the halfa, and Danny grinned and wiggled his eyebrows at his friend.

"Yeah, I know. Being sixty-something, from another dimension, and a freak of nature will do that to ya," Danny said easily, but jumped when Stan suddenly snapped, "You're not a freak!"

There was a long silence as Danny stared at Stan, before he raised his eyebrows and began to pull the car away from the prison. "Oookay," he drawled. "I'm just going to pretend that didn't happen."

"Sorry," Stan offered gruffly, shrugging and scowling out the window. "Old habit."

Danny glanced at his friend, before shrugging and leaving the matter be. Stan didn't look entirely comfortable with continuing the previous conversation, so Danny moved on.

"So, what now?" Danny asked, and Stan glanced at him, eyebrows rising in surprise.

"I – uh, I thought you'd have some sort of idea," Stan stammered, and Danny blinked, staring ahead at the road.

"Oh. Well, this is awkward," he commented flippantly. A beat passed, before Danny cleared his throat. "So, uh, think we should just drive off into the sunset?"

"Sounds good," Stan agreed with a touch of desperation, and flung a finger in a random direction. "Let's head back to the US!"

With a grin and the roar of the engines, Danny whooped and slammed his foot down on the pedal.

"Let's roll!"

* * *

 **Please, let me know what you think!**

 **Posted and Edited: 09/04/2016, 10:40 PM**


	3. Chapter 3

**I probably should be listening to the lectures my professors prepare, especially with an exam in two days, but OH WELL**

 **Thanks for all the awesome reviews, people!**

* * *

 **Chapter 3**

It wasn't long until Stanley figured out the extent of Danny's powers.

Of course, to Stan, it was a trial by fire when Danny pushed the car as fast as it could go, turned the car invisible and intangible, and _blasted_ past the United States and Mexico border at a speed that rivaled a jet plane.

Danny claimed that it was to get back to the United States as quickly as possible. It had _nothing_ to do with the fact that Stan was screaming for twenty minutes straight before the conman managed to get his racing heart under control.

Nothing at all.

Of course, that led to a discussion about the extent of Danny's abilities, and how he was able to become half-ghost in the first place.

"Well, it was an accident," Danny said in response to Stan's question about the origin of his powers, and Stan gaped at him.

"An _accident_?" Stan's voice squeaked horribly at the end when Danny "accidentally" drove through the middle of a crowded shopping plaza in San Antonio, Texas. He gripped the armrests on the car like his life depended on it. "You weren't born with them or anything?"

Danny shot Stan a confused glance, despite the fact that they were both invisible. "Uh, no? My parents are both perfectly normal humans. Well, if you count their eccentricities and ghost hobby normal."

"Oh, I thought you'd be born with it, like –" Stan clammed up, and Danny's eyebrows rose as they sped horizontally through several highways.

"Okay, this is the second time you've said something related to anything abnormal or whatever. Spill," he commanded, nonchalantly driving through a semi-truck.

After a moment, Stan sighed. "I'm going to need a drink for this."

"Okay," Danny agreed easily, and gave the steering wheel an abrupt yank.

They arrived at a small, desert down, accompanied by Stan's cursing and Danny's quiet chuckles. Danny released his powers on the car as they pulled up to a gas station, and as Stan got out on jelly-legs, Danny called, "Go ahead to the bar; I need to refill on gas." He looked at the gas prices, and shook his head, as if in disbelief. "It's amazing that everything's so cheap," he commented idly.

Stan eyed him warily, almost afraid to ask. But let nobody assume that Staley Filman Pines was a coward. "What do you mean?"

"Gas prices; from where I am from, year 2012, was about two dollars and fifty cents a gallon," Danny said brightly, and Stan shuddered at the high price. "Imagine my surprise when I come back to the past, and it's like, two cents per gallon."

"Well, if you're used to such high prices, then you're paying for my drinks," Stan grumbled in disgust. "Two dollars a gallon, what were people thinking?"

"If it makes you feel any better," Danny called at his retreating back with a twinkle in his eye, "It was almost four dollars in California!"

"No, that doesn't help!" Stan shouted back before he stepped into the nearest bar.

It took less than five minutes for Danny to join him, and they picked a secluded booth to nurse their drinks.

"How were you able to get that?" Stan asked curiously as Danny slid into the seat across from him with a cold bottle of beer. He pointed at the bottle in Danny's hand. "You don't look like you're twenty-one."

Danny rolled his eyes. "I might be perpetually eighteen, but there's no way I'm denying myself the opportunity to drink," he said, flashing an ID that claimed the half-ghost was twenty-two. "Plus, half-ghost metabolism pretty much burns out the alcohol anyways, so I get to have all the effects of alcohol without the nasty hangover the next day," he said with a mocking nod towards Stan, who cursed at his friend's luck.

The gruff man kicked the halfa under the table. "Shuddup and buy me another beer."

"Of course," Danny drawled with fake condescension, before he snorted and waved the waitress over for another round of drinks.

Once the waitress was gone, Stan sighed. "Alright, so you wanted to know why I wasn't _too_ bothered by your glimpse into the afterlife?"

"That's one way of putting it, yeah," Danny said with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.

Stan took a deep drink from his bottle, before he began to speak.

"I was born June 15th, 1950 in Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey, along with a twin brother by the name of Stanford Filbrick Pines."

And just like that, the entire story spilled out. Stan's childhood with a twin that had six fingers on each hand, their adventures as brothers and best friends, their dreams, their goals. He spoke of his parents, a father scarred with memories of World War II (Danny shivered at that, and if Stan noticed, he didn't say a single word), and a mother that worked as a fake psychic. How Stanford was given the opportunity to attend West Coast Tech, and how Stanley had accidentally ruined the opportunity for him in a fit of poor teen judgement and anger. How it led to Stanley being kicked out of his home by his father as a result, and how Stan had wound up all over the country, and in prison in three different countries, with numerous fake IDs and an ever-increasing sense of loneliness and desperation.

At the end of it, Danny was silent, nursing his bottle with a contemplative look on his face.

"Well, since you didn't spare a single detail," he said seriously to a slightly tipsy Stan, "I suppose I will have to do the same."

And so, Danny talked about how he got his powers, how his parents' machine activated while he was inside, and how he began to develop ghostly powers quickly afterwards. He reminisced about his friends, Sam and Tucker, and his sister Jazz, and his kooky ghost-hunting parents, as well as the numerous ghosts and villains that Danny had to fight in order to keep his town safe. He talked about the Guys in White, Vlad Masters, Pariah Dark, and how he ended up becoming one of the most powerful ghosts in his dimension, to the point where he was able to convince the others ghosts to help him in saving the world from a meteorite of gigantic proportions. He avoided mentioning Dan, however. That was another can of worms that Danny did _not_ want to open, even after all of these years.

Then, he talked about the second accident with his parents' portal, and how he was sucked into a world that was sixty years behind his own. He spoke of the Great Depression, of how neat it was to actually _live_ in history at first, but then the fight and struggle to just _feed_ his large appetite and metabolism.

"And then…World War II started," Danny finished hollowly. "I was part of the Sixth Armored Division in the Third Army, and it wasn't that bad at first. Yeah, the fighting was brutal, but I was good enough with my abilities that I could disable people, rather than kill them, and I never got shot. But then…" Danny finished off his seventh bottle of beer, and sighed, before setting the bottle aside and placing his forehead in his hands. "We found the Buchenwald Concentration Camp."

Stanley went gray, his eyes wide in disbelief. "Oh god," he breathed, and clutched his own bottle tighter. All signs of drunkenness vanished in the face of Danny's quiet confession, and he swallowed hard.

Danny just shook his head. "Yeah, it was bad," he admitted lowly, fighting past images of corpses, literal _hills_ of dead bodies, and hundreds more victims, all with sunken cheeks, haunted eyes, and frail limbs. "I will never get over it, I think." He swallowed hard, and clutched at his shaggy hair in an attempt to hide his trembling hands. "It's one thing to hear about it, to grow up with it in the history books you learn in school, but god, _being there_ …"

"Y'know, this is getting too depressing to continue," Stan said hastily, eyeing Danny's empty gaze and shaking hands. He took a quick drink of his beer, and changed the subject. "What kind of powers do you have? I know you can float, turn invisible, go through things if our last car ride was any example…"

"Oh, uh," Danny fumbled, and latched onto the new topic with a renewed vigor. "Flight, invisibility, intangibility, I can shoot ectoplasmic blasts from my eyes and hands, duplicate clones, possess people and objects, move things around with my powers, and create a ghostly wail. That's only for emergencies, though. Like, "hordes of zombies" emergencies, because I've flattened an acre of trees before with it. And that was when I was still sixteen."

Stan stared, before gulping. "Yikes. Well, let's hope I never get on to your bad side, Casper."

Danny chuckled in surprise, a flash of an old, familiar school darting through his mind. "Casper?"

"Yeah, like that thingymajig cartoon about the friendly ghost. It suits you. Casper or whatever," Stan muttered reluctantly, a faint blush staining his cheeks, and Danny grinned, feeling his good mood slowly come back.

"Anything better than Inviso-bill. That's by far the worst nickname I've encountered so far," he told the conman.

Stan snorted. "Please. I have an ID that says "Billingus Bush" right now; you can't get worse than that," he informed the halfa with a crooked smile.

"Hah," Danny snorted. He grabbed his bottle of beer, and held it up to Stan in a toast. "To our future; hopefully we won't get saddled with any more bad names."

"Terrible toast, but cheers!" Stan said cheerfully, clinking his bottle against Danny's and together, they drank.

* * *

 **Little bit of character development and bonding. Also, Danny would _totally_ drive like his dad - like he was trying to avoid cops and baby strollers, all the while using his ghost powers to scare the everliving daylights out of Stan.**

 **Posted 09/12/2016, 10:49 PM**


	4. Chapter 4

**Got a little busy, but one of my classes were cancelled because of the test we had last week, so I had a little free time just now. Just a little character bonding and insight, I suppose.**

* * *

 **Chapter 4**

Danny was not happy.

"Please? Come on!" Stan wheedled. "Think of the money we can make!"

"No," Danny snapped and folded his arms. "I don't use my abilities to rip people off. I use them to _help_ people."

"Yeah, you'll be helping me!" Stan argued shamelessly. "And besides, where do you even get your money from? You don't even have a job, as far as I know!"

Danny grinned, a tad mischievously. "Well, I have it on good authority that crime does pay. Or rather, criminals do."

Stan stared at his friend in the dark light of the motel they were staying at. It was old, cheap, and didn't ask a lot of questions; all things that Stan approved of. Plus, having a bodyguard in the form of a friendly half-ghost-ex-soldier was just a bonus.

"What, you're secretly a crime boss or something?" Stan grunted, trying to appear unimpressed, but secretly making plans on how to utilize this new information.

"Or something," Danny echoed knowingly, and when Stan began to frown at him, he shook his head with amusement. "I beat up criminals and take their money," he clarified.

Stan's face reddened, and he snapped in a mix of shock and surprise, "You _what_? What are you, like some sort of modern Robin Hood or something, Casper?"

Stan's nickname made Danny smile. It filled him with a sense of warmth and comfort every time he heard it nowadays. Seemed to beat back the sense of loneliness that was creeping on him before he met the conman.

"Well, while Robin gives to the poor, I use the funds to take care of myself. Besides, I mostly go after rapists, thieves, and gang members," Danny replied easily. He stretched out on the cheap motel bed like it was a luxurious, five-star hotel mattress, and gestured at the gigantic pile of take-out beside them. "My ghost powers come with a huge appetite, unfortunately."

"Then why won't you help me rip off these gullible suckers, then?" Stan demanded, waving the white plastic sheet he purchased earlier for Danny. "You're not taking their money; they're _giving_ it to you."

All traces of amusement vanished from Danny's face. He abruptly sat up and glared at Stan. "I don't like cheating," he said coolly, and Stan shivered at the icy gazy. "It doesn't lead to anything good. But if you keep it your business, then I will keep my problems about cheating _my_ business. Are we clear?" An image of Dan appeared in Danny's mind, fanged teeth bared in a macabre grin while flame-like hair waved amidst a city full of destruction and ruin, and Danny grit his teeth and beat the image back. He turned dimly glowing green eyes on his friend, hoping that his new friend would be able to realize that this was _not okay_ for the halfa.

When Stan gulped and nodded, Danny sighed, and all signs of hostility vanished, only to be replaced with a tired, worn look. "Look, just, don't drag me into your scams, okay? I'll help pay for food, rent, and basic supplies, but I won't be _cheating_ people from their money." Danny spat out the word "cheating" like it was a particularly vile curse. And so, instead of pressing the issue, Stan simply nodded, and spread out on his own mattress.

"Ow," he yelped, and sat up, before twisting around and padding the mattress. After a moment of feeling around, he pulled out a doll arm.

The two stared at it for a long moment, before Danny spoke.

"Okay, I'm a ghost, and even that's creepy," he piped up, a slow grin forming on his face, and with a scowl, Stan hurled the doll arm across the room.

"You said it, Casper," he grumbled, settling back down onto his mattress and flicking on the staticky TV. "You said it.

* * *

 **Enjoy! Leave reviews! :)**

 **Posted and Edited: 09/26/2016, 2:27 PM**


	5. Chapter 5

**Got bored during class. Enjoy!**

* * *

 **Chapter 5**

"What – what _are_ these?" Stan demanded, and Danny laughed.

"Dwarvez!" Danny laughed, holding up a little figurine with an explosion of white fuzzy hair around its face. He waved it around, and gestured at the veritable army of Dwarvez dolls scattered around him. "I found a shipment that fell on the side of the road, and decided to take them with me! Aren't they hilarious?" He tugged at the fuzzy hair, and chuckled again. "We don't have these in my dimension – we have these things called _Trollz_ , but they look like they could suck out your soul if you keep them for too long," he finished with a shudder.

Stan picked one up, and peered at its big glassy eyes. "I'm kinda feeling the same way about these ones too. Think they'll come to life if we fall asleep with them in the room?"

There was a moment as Danny studied them, and gradually, his look of amusement melted into one of fear.

"Actually, yeah, we gotta get rid of these," Danny said after a moment. He gave Stan a wide-eyed look. "Think they'll end up like Chucky the doll? Or heaven forbid, _Furbies?_ "

Stan gave him a flat stare. "I literally have no idea what you're talking about," he told the halfa plainly, and watched as Danny leapt to his feet. "Why don't we just sell them?"

"Huh?" Danny asked, and scooped a bundle of the dolls into his arms. He gave Stan a suspicious look. "As in, scamming others?"

Stan sighed, and took another sip of his beer. "Fine, how about _I_ sell them, and you have nothing to do with them?"

Danny nodded approvingly, and leaned in. "Good, you're learning," he teased, patting Stan's cheek, and grumbling, the conman batted the cold hand away.

* * *

A few days later, their little motel room in Los Angeles was thankfully devoid of Dwarvez, and Stan returned to the motel room they were staying at, whistling and humming cheerfully.

He strode into the room, twirled his keys, and locked up the door behind him. "Badum, doo, doo wop doo," he hummed, and turned around, only to come nose-to-nose with one scowling Danny Phantom.

"HOLY MOTHER OF – geez, give me a heart attack, why don't ya? Hospitals don't come cheap, y'know!" Stan yelped, clutching at his chest, and Danny's frown deepened.

"You're twenty-seven," the halfa retorted, his voice echoing, and Stan shook his head.

"Still, warn a guy," he complained, but then he noticed the halfa's unhappy expression. "Uh, who died, Casper, you?" He laughed at his own joke, but trailed off at Danny's silence. "Seriously, what's wrong?"

Danny held up a newspaper, and on the front page, it read, _"Candle Holders for your Candle Holders – A Quick Way to Burn Through your Paychecks."_

Stan grimaced, and tried to come up with an excuse. "It's, uh, the rainy season?"

Danny's eyebrows rose, unimpressed. "Yeah, so?"

"Well," Stan said quickly, "these rainy seasons cause blackouts in cities like these, y'know?" He licked his lips. "So, uh, I provided these specialty candle holders to keep stuff like wax inside the original candle holders, so houses don't burn down."

"And I'm sure at a very generous price," Danny drawled, pointing at a number bolded in the article – Fifty dollars, with no refunds.

"Oh, yeah, very generous," Stan agreed, giving Danny a quick smile. When the halfa didn't smile back, Stan rolled his eyes. "Alright, fine, you caught me. But look, Casper, this is how I live my life, how I earn my money. It's something I'm actually _good_ at, okay? And it's not like I have the option of calling home and asking for help, alright?"

Danny held Stan's brown-eyed gaze a moment longer, then sighed. He sank back to the floor, and Stan realized in that moment that Danny had been floating off the ground during the entire conversation. He resisted the urge to shiver. _Creepy_.

"Just as long as you don't drag me into it, okay?" Danny finally relented. "I heard you muttering about using me as a ghost to convince people that the car was "haunted," and charge people thirty dollars per showing."

Stan laughed sheepishly, and rubbed the back of his neck. "Haha, yeah, you weren't supposed to hear that." And when Danny glared at him, he hastily raised his hands up. "It was just a joke! A joke!"

Danny smirked, and floated away. "So, how was your day?" he called over his shoulder, and Stan's expression brightened.

"Oh, man, easily made like six hundred bucks," he chortled. "Suckers didn't know what hit 'em."

"Do anything illegal?" Danny asked, pausing by the motel windows and peering out with a look of confusion on his face, and Stan twiddled his thumbs.

"Uh, why do you ask?"

Danny pointed, just as blue and red lights exploded from the window. "Because there's a bunch of cops coming to a stop in front of the motel."

Stan cursed, and jumped up. "Son of a – they saw me?! How? I checked to see if anyone nearby saw anything!" he cried.

Danny snorted as he watched Stan pack with a frenzy, before he flicked his fingers. The conman yelped when all their personal items in the room glowed, before flying and settling neatly into their two bags. Quickly, Stan shook it off, and began to stuff non-personal items into the bags as well, such as the motel pens, the conditioner, the shampoo, the soap, and the bible. Danny rolled his eyes at the irony. "Have you heard of security cameras? I heard they're becoming more and more popular these days."

"Crap, they must've seen me scamming people, breaking windows, and stealing," Stan grimaced, slinging his bag over his shoulder, and Danny sniggered at him. "Lemme guess – it's a _future_ thing, isn't it?" he demanded.

Danny easily picked up his own bag, and placed a hand on Stan's shoulder. "You could say that," he said, and easily turned them invisible and intangible.

" _Billingus Bush, you're under arrest! Come out with your hands up in the air!"_ a voice blared from outside, but the pair ignored it in favor of escaping through the wall and towards the car. With a simple touch, Danny turned the car invisible, and settled them both inside.

Within minutes they were gone, and Danny finally released his hold on invisibility. He glanced at Stan, and said, "So, what did you steal, anyways?"

Stan laughed. "Oh, man, I didn't tell you?" He dug around in his pocket, and yanked out –

Danny's expression fell flat. "You're joking."

"Nope!" Stan said brightly, shaking the tiny ring case around enthusiastically. "This baby is _so_ worth it! Look!" He opened up the case and jabbed a thick finger at the center of the ring. "Those things are diamonds, man, diamonds!"

"Who did you steal that from?" Danny demanded, exasperated, and Stan shrugged.

"I dunno. This sweaty guy had it sitting out on the table at the café I was passing, so I threw a rock through the window next to him, swiped it in the distraction, and ran for my life," Stan chuckled.

"You idiot," Danny sighed in both amusement and frustration. "The guy was probably waiting to propose to someone!"

The smile on Stan's face fell. "Oh, uh, didn't think of that," he admitted after a moment. Danny snorted and shook his head again.

"Yeah, you're probably only going to get like, three thousand off of that thing. And that's being generous," Danny told his friend.

Stan's grin reappeared, but this time it had a certain edge. "Leave that to me! Just spin some wild story about how it used to belong to a dead celebrity, and bam! Cash money!"

"You're terrible," Danny said with a laugh.

Stan just preened in reply.

* * *

 **Posted and Edited: 10/03/2016, 7:09 PM**


	6. Chapter 6

**So guess who's procrastinating on a take-home midterm consisting of international trade and economics? Because it most definitely is me.**

 **Also, as a small note, if you've been leaving reviews (and I know you have, don't make me have to find you), ffnet's been having some issues. Some reviews haven't been going through, from what I've heard. So if you _have_ been leaving questions and stuff and I haven't been answering, that's why. So just shoot me a PM instead, okay? **

* * *

**Chapter 6**

"You should give him a call," Danny urged quietly.

They were standing on the outskirts of a small town in Wyoming, under a streetlight on a brisk autumn night. It was chillier than usual, being Wyoming, but that didn't bother Danny, of course. Being half-ghost had its perks. He was only dressed in an old army jacket from his military days, combat boots reminiscent of Sam's, jeans, and a white and red t-shirt. A cold wind ruffled his hair, and he glanced up at the moon before turning his attention back towards Stan.

Stan stood in front of a phone box, and stared at the number in his hands. He was flipping through the phone book in their motel out of boredom, and had choked at the sight of his twin's name and number listed among the yellow pages.

At first, he was incredibly excited. Maybe he would be able to muster up the courage this time to talk to his estranged twin. However, it now seemed like Stan was having doubts about calling his brother. He continued to stare at the number, unaffected by the cold.

Finally, Danny sighed, and shoved his hands into his pockets.

"Look, Stan, I'm not the one to tell you what to do with your life, or your family," Danny offered quietly, sadly. "But if it were me, I'd give _anything_ to be able to see my family again, let alone have the opportunity to call them."

That seemed to snap Stan out of his stupor. "I've tried calling before," he sighed heavily. "But I kept losing my nerve. And then I lost the number," he murmured regretfully. He frowned at the number, and then glanced at the phone. A look of determination crossed his face, and he gave himself a sharp nod before reaching for the phone.

With trembling, gloved hands, he punched in the number, and held the phone up to his ear.

He held his breath as the dial tone rang through. His heart thundered in his chest, and his palms were slick with sweat despite the cold. Beside him, Danny watched with bated breath.

Finally, there was a click. Stan's breath hitched, and he opened his mouth to speak, when –

" _Thank you for calling the Office of Doctor Stanford Pines. However, Dr. Pines is away on research at the moment. Please leave your name and number, and he will call back when he returns in two years. Hopefully."_

Stan's eager expression fell into a disappointed scowl, and he threw the phone back onto the receiver. Danny gave him a reluctant smile. "No luck?"

"He's away. On _business_. Sounds like he's getting it all in life," Stan mumbled, before he raised his voice, angry and bitter. " _Doctor_ Stanford Pines! Favorite child, the _Brainiac,_ the _Golden Boy_! Away on a trip! Doesn't even have the decency to call his own _damn twin_!" Stan spat with vitriol, before his expression crumbled. He let out a heavy sigh, lips trembling and eyes glassy, and kicked at the ground.

A cold hand rested against his leather-clad shoulder, and resisting the urge to cry, Stan glanced over at Danny.

The halfa looked sympathetic, and even though Stan protested weakly with a tremulous smile, he allowed the time-traveler to pull him into a strong hug.

No words were spoken – none were needed. Stan knew that Danny Fenton would be there for him, and Stan would be there for him.

It was then that Stan decided that he would do everything he could to find a way back home for Danny. He was no genius like his brother, but he would try his best.

Because Danny deserved it.

* * *

 **So yeah. A little more serious of a chapter. Please, leave a review! In the spirit of Halloween or spoopiness or whatever.**

 **Posted and Edited: 10/13/2016, 10:19PM**


	7. Chapter 7

**New chapter because I'm procrastinating studying for a Geology exam someone send help to get my life back together**

* * *

 **Chapter 7**

It was a year before Stanley Filman Pines heard anything from his twin.

But that year was a very fun year.

Danny and Stan decided that they would simply travel around the United States, sight-seeing, enjoying their time together, and in Stan's case, ripping people off while keeping an eye out for anything that could bring Danny back home. Most of the time, he hit dead ends , such as fake ghost tours, obscure gothic literature, and useless paranormal investigators (Mostly under the pretence of trying to find out more about Danny's abilities, when the halfa got suspicious). In addition to that, Stan's schemes didn't work very well ("The "Rip-off" band-aid? Stan, that thing was giving people allergic reactions!" "Not my problem if they couldn't understand the underlying context of the scam, Casper! It's called the "Rip-off" for a reason!"). There was also one wild night in Las Vegas where Stan was married to someone for all of six hours ("What was her name? Marlene? Mary?" "It's Marilyn, Stan! For God's sake, how were you able to marry her without even remembering her _name_?!"). They were also currently banned from fifteen states, but they both ignored that. It wasn't like anyone could actually stop the two of them.

Currently, they were in a seedy-looking town called Dead End, New Mexico, in a particular grungy-looking motel. The pair of them, instead of Stan running off to scam people and Danny half-heartedly trying to stop him, were reminiscing over a series of photos that Danny had gotten developed.

Danny sniggered at one of the photos of Stan's "Marriage" that his clone managed to get before Danny was too drunk to comprehend anything beyond "another drink." Stan and Marilyn both looked wasted, but happy. And Danny was drunkenly waving upside down in the top corner of the photo ("How are you doing that?" Marilyn slurred, blinking her eyes fuzzily, and Stan blurted, "Special effects! Like in the movies!"). He laughed aloud at the sight of a fantastic, _hilarious_ photo, of him laying _through a wall_ , drunk out of his mind, his lower half intangible, and a casino worker screaming like she had seen a banshee.

That probably would have gotten the Guys in White on him in less than ten seconds in his old dimension, but here, Danny couldn't care less. Especially since it seemed like his clone had taken care of the situation _after_ taking several pictures.

"When did you take this? _How_ did you take this?! You didn't even have a camera on you!" Stan exclaimed, interrupting Danny's train of thought by waving a photo of himself in his underwear and choking on his toothbrush in the bathroom. Danny laughed again, blue eyes bright, and took the photo to look at it more closely. He remembered that day. He had caught Stan crooning Sixties love songs to himself in the mirror when Danny accidentally walked in.

"I always have a clone floating around, just in case," Danny explained with an air of mischief. "…Aaaannnnd if the clone happens to have like five disposable cameras, then that's hardly my fault."

"Of course not," Stan replied drolly, but amusement curled at his lips as he took the photo away from the halfa.

A loud bang on the door interrupted them, and both of them jumped.

Frowning, Stan marched to the motel door with a determined glint in his brown eyes. "Look, if this is about the ketchup on the Dachshund in the lobby of the motel, I had nothing to do with it! Same with the relish, too!" he denied loudly.

Danny rolled his eyes. "Yeah, the dog _somehow_ got it all over itself, from the bottles that were _conveniently_ on the table that was too high for the dog to reach," he drawled sarcastically, and Stan shot him a glare of annoyance.

The conman then huffed and peered through the peephole embedded into the door. His bushy eyebrows shot up to the edge of his thick brown hair when he spotted a postman walking away from the door.

"We got mail?" Stan asked, surprised, and opened the door.

"Hah," Danny snorted to himself. "That won't come out for another few years," he commented, thinking of a certain email system, and Stan shot him a look of confusion. However, after a moment, he just shook his head and leaned down to pick up the postcard.

"I swear, I should charge you five dollars for every "future" reference you –" He stopped abruptly when he turned over the postcard, and Danny straightened.

"Stan?" he asked when the scammer didn't move for a minute. A beat passed, and just as Danny was about to get worried, Stan turned around, all traces of humor gone.

"This postcard…it's from Stanford," he said slowly, with both apprehension and amazement. He showed the postcard to Danny, allowing the halfa to read the words, "GRAVITY FALLS" in big, bold letters. After a moment, Stan flipped it, and Danny caught sight of the words, in a neat, thick scrawl, " _PLEASE COME – Ford_."

Danny took the postcard and began to study it. "Gravity Falls, Oregon? I've never heard of it."

"Why would my brother need me, after all these years?" Stan demanded, ignoring Danny's question entirely. He began to pace anxiously across the motel room's floor. "We haven't been in contact for so long, and just out of the blue, he just asks for my help?"

Danny's expression twisted into one of seriousness, and he pointed out, "Must be something dangerous, or maybe even illegal, if he requires help from a brother he hasn't seen in ten years."

"Yeah, but if it's that dangerous, then it means that Ford's gotten in over his head," Stan countered, pausing his pacing in order to look at Danny. He swallowed. "And what kind of little brother would I be if I didn't help him out?"

"He didn't help _you_ out," Danny replied coolly, and Stan hesitated, before he shook his head.

"No, I'm going. He's family, I have to," he said finally, clenching his fists with determination, and Danny simply studied him before rising to his feet.

"To be honest, I would do the same thing for my family and friends," he sighed reluctantly. "Let's get packing and on the road, then."

They were gone within the hour... _after_ Stan managed to get his money back from the hotel desk.

* * *

 **A little mixture of silliness and seriousness.**

 **Also, thank you everyone for the reviews! I was actually surprised to see the feedback I was getting! I'm mostly just writing this because of my inability to be a productive member of society, but it is nice to hear that y'all truly enjoy this story! Thank you so much!**

 **Posted and Edited: 10/19/2016, 12:38 PM**


	8. Chapter 8

**Guess who's procrastinating hardcore again?**

 **Anyways, regardless of my work ethic, thank you for all the reviews! Also, whoever pointed out that my summary was not eye-catching at _all_ , thank you! I'll be sure to fix that right away! I'll admit that I got lazy when I wrote the summary...**

* * *

 **Chapter 8**

It started snowing the closer they got to Oregon. By the time they crossed the Nevada-Oregon border, the snow reached past their knees. Most of the roads were clear, however, and if they weren't, Danny simply used his intangibility to get past the snow with minimal effort.

The entire way, Stan fretted. He switched between apprehensive and eager, worried and excited. He yelled loudly out of the window about how he wasn't scared, about how he wasn't nervous or anything, but then he would curl up in the seat and question his all of his life choices.

"Will he hate me? Will he still blame me for what happened ten years ago? What if he still doesn't like me? Oh man, what if he ever runs into my ex-wife–?!"

"Stan, I swear to god, if you keep questioning yourself, I'm going to go and dunk you into that lake over there," Danny snarled as they passed by a gloomy, foggy lake covered in snow and ice.

Stan shot Danny a confused glance, and asked, "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Nothing, just shuts you up," Danny retorted, and Stan scowled.

"Well, _sorry_ , Casper, I'm just scared that my brother might not be happy to see me! Or that something might be wrong!" he yelled at the halfa, and Danny rolled his eyes.

"Look, whatever happens, happens," Danny told the conman bluntly. "This is your chance to get some closure. Because trust me on this, not having any closure whatsoever sucks."

Stan turned Danny's words over, contemplating them and mulling over it, just as Danny pulled onto a rocky, dirt road. Finally, he groaned and sank back into his seat. "You're right," he said wearily. "Who knows? This might be my chance to fix things between my brother and I."

"Glad to hear it," Danny said with a quick flash of a smile at Stan. "Because we're here."

"Wait, what?!" Stan yelped, hands scrabbling against the side of the car and the passenger seat. "Wait, wait, I'm not ready yet!"

"Too bad!" Danny said with a glint of mischief in his eye, and Stan's hands finally clutched at his seatbelt like his life depended on it.

They slowed down in front of a quaint, two-story cabin in the middle of the woods. However, snow piled on the rooftops, and there were icicles hanging everywhere around the porch. In fact, the entire house, despite looking fairly new, looked deserted or abandoned. The "No Trespassing" sign on the front door and the barrels of radioactive waste on the front porch were a nice touch, Danny thought sarcastically. The halfa turned his attention to the map sitting in his lap.

"Hmm, I'm pretty sure the address is right," Danny muttered, and tossed the map into the backseat. "The money I would give to still have a phone with GPS…" He stepped out of the car, and turned when an increasingly sweaty and paling Stan made no move to get out of the car. "Come on," Danny told the young man with a tentative smile. Then, his smile grew into something more determined. "If you don't come out, I'll _make_ you come out."

Gulping, Stan hastily made his way out of the car. He _really_ didn't want to risk Danny's threat – he'd already been subjected to being possessed, and forced to sing Christmas Carols in the middle of a busy mall plaza in _July_. Oh, the _humiliation_ – it was enough to scar a man.

With no other choice, Stan stepped out of the car, and slowly, warily made his way to the front door. A friendly, cold hand clasped his shoulder briefly, but when Stan looked back, Danny's hand was at his side, like it had never left it.

"Alright, calm down, Stan," the conman muttered to himself. "You haven't seen your brother in ten years. It's okay, he's family. He won't bite."

And with a heavy swallow and shaking hands, Stanley knocked on the door.

Almost immediately, it was thrown open, and Stan opened his mouth, only to come face-to-face with a crossbow. With a shout, he ducked, and Danny sank into a defensive stance, half prepared to either go intangible, or throw up a shield at any moment.

"What do you want?!" a voice so similar to Stanley's, yet so different, bellowed aggressively, and both of them caught a hint of glinting glasses and rough, calloused, six-fingered hands. "Have you come to steal my _eyes_?!"

"Well, I can always count on you for a warm welcome," Stan groused dryly, covering his head.

There was a beat, and both Stan and Danny stayed perfectly still, eyes fixed on the glinting crossbow, before it slowly lowered.

"Did anyone follow you here, Stanley?" A figure appeared in the shadowy doorway, and Danny caught a glimpse of worn eyes, a face covered in stubble, and the slump of a man at his wit's end.

To Danny, Stanford looked just like his brother, nearly identical, if it weren't for minute differences that the halfa's sharp eyes picked out. Ford's jaw was a little slimmer, and not as scruffy as his brother's. However, while he didn't have as pronounced a frown as Stan did, he did have deeper stress lines and crow's feet lining his eyes. Not to mention that his hair was (mostly) trimmed and neat, whereas Stan's mullet was beginning to grate on Danny's nerves.

"You came?" Stanford spluttered out, as if he could scarcely believe that his twin would help him.

"Hello to you too, pal," Stanley grumbled, and Danny could detect a note of bitterness and worry as the conman took in his twin's appearance.

Danny shifted, as if to comfort Stan, but before he had the chance, he was staring down the length of a crossbow bolt.

"And who is this?!" Stanford demanded dangerously, and Danny straightened, his blue eyes as cold as the snow around them.

"Danny Fenton, Stanley's traveling companion and best friend," Danny said, holding out a hand, and resisted the urge to smirk when he saw the confused and slightly hurt look in Stanford's eyes. He knew that he had taken Stanford's place as Stanley's best friend, and hoped, just a little, that the man felt guilty about it. In Danny's opinion, siblings should stick together, through thick and thin. And Stanford had taken the easy way out, simply _ignored_ his brother's problems. Danny knew that Jazz would _never_ have done that. She would have fought and worked as hard as she could to get Danny back – and _had_ done so.

And Danny would have done the same.

However, Stanford had ignored his brother's plight, and continued to reside at home – never trying to get in contact until his twin was needed.

"Stan, why is he here?" Stanford asked, narrowing his eyes, but he yelped when Stan shoved the crossbow away roughly.

"He's here because I want him to be," Stan argued, and gave Danny a slight smile. "I'd probably still be stuck in Mexico if it weren't for him."

Stanford hesitated, but to Stan's and Danny's relief, he set the crossbow aside. However, he then flashed a bright flashlight in each of their eyes, and both of them flinched.

"Hey, what's the meaning of this?" Stan demanded, batting his brother's hands aside with annoyance, and Stanford growled.

"Just making sure you weren't – never mind." He waved them both inside with renewed urgency. "Can't be too careful," he said ominously, manic eyes sweeping the clearing behind them, and stepped back from the doorway.

Stan muttered something deprecating under his breath, but walked inside. Quickly, Danny followed his friend.

And as soon as Danny's foot crossed over the threshold, something flared bright blue, and Danny collapsed.

* * *

 **(Makes spooky noises even though it's too late for Halloween) What's going to happen _neeexxxttt_...?**

 **Review! I'm trying to hit a goal of ten reviews per chapter, so every little bit helps! :)**

 **Posted and Edited: 12:13 PM, 11/2/2016**


	9. Chapter 9

**HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS! I ask for ten reviews, and I get nearly double! Y'all are the fricken best!**

 **Also, fair warning: finals are coming up, and thus, I might have enough time to write in the upcoming weeks. But I might stupidly procrastinate like I always do so who knows.**

 **Anyways, enjoy! (*cackles evilly*)**

* * *

 **Chapter 9**

It all happened so quickly.

To Stan's shock and alarm, Danny collapsed as something around the house flared blue, and Ford rounded on his brother with terror flashing in his eyes.

"What have you brought here?!" he demanded, pushing Stan roughly against the wall of the foyer. " _What is he_?! I made sure anything _supernatural_ couldn't enter my home!" The word "supernatural" was spat with such vitriol, disgust, and horror, that Stan briefly wondered what his brother had encountered, before he pushed that to the back of his mind. The slightly shaking hands gripping his collar and the wild, wide-eyed look Stan had in his eyes was more important. And, most importantly, _what was wrong with Danny_?!

Stan glared back and quickly shoved his brother off. " _He_ is a good friend of mine, and none of your business!" he snarled back, before he quickly rushed over to Danny. "Hey, Casper, you doin' okay?" he asked urgently, patting the halfa's face, and Danny groaned, before his tan skin drained of color.

He weakly pushed himself up into a sitting position, and stared at his hands with dawning anxiety in his eyes. "I can't feel it anymore," he whispered worriedly to Stan. "It's – it's gone."

"Casper?" Stanford asked in confusion, fear, and wariness, "But you said your name was Danny–" Realization crossed the researcher's face, and suddenly, both Stan and Danny were staring down the glinting end of the crossbow again. "You brought a _person possessed by a ghost_ into my _home_?! And you _knew, Stanley?!_ "

"Not possessed," Stan corrected sourly, ignoring his brother's second question and the hurt that accompanied it (and briefly marveled at how his brother was so quick on the uptake – even if he was slightly off with his deduction). With a shake of his head, he helped Danny back onto his feet.

"Half," Danny sighed, before he shook out his limbs. He still felt as weak and shaky as the day he had his powers zapped from him by Vlad, back in his high school days. "I'd rather not say."

"I don't think you have much choice in the matter," Stanford growled dangerously.

Both Stan and Danny traded worried glances. Despite the expression on Danny's face, he color seemed to be returning, and Stan took that as a good sign. Slowly, the conman relaxed, but he still kept a wary eye on his friend's condition. He met Danny's eye, and he shrugged.

 _'It's your call,'_ said the shrug, and after a moment, Danny heaved a defeated sigh.

"Fine," Danny reluctantly grumbled, leaning against a nearby wall for support. "My name is Danny Fenton, and my parents' research into the paranormal accidentally turned me into a half-ghost, or halfa, if you will. Happy?"

"What are you doing here?!" Stanford demanded aggressively, and Stan groaned at his Ford's paranoia.

"Calm down, Poindexter, he's here because of me!" he snapped, and knocked the crossbow out of his twin's hands. "I wanted him to come with me. Besides, he's one of the most morally uptight ghosts I've ever met in my life. Never lets me have any fun," he finished with a grumble.

"Not my fault you can't go two miles before you try and pick someone's wallet," Danny replied, and he exchanged a small, cheeky grin with Stan.

Ford watched their interaction with wide, cautious eyes, before he sighed and gestured for them to follow him further into the house. "Fine. I'm trusting you on this, Stanley," he shot over his shoulder in a frigid tone, and immediately, Stan's tentative good mood vanished.

" _Sheesh_. Maybe you wanna explain what's going on here?" Stan demanded, trailing after his twin, and with a grimace, Danny quickly followed. He didn't like what was going on, and he liked it even less to not have his ghost powers as backup. "You're acting like mom after a tenth cup of coffee."

Not to mention that the entire house looked like a mad scientist's _dream_.

"Listen, there isn't much time to explain," Stanford muttered rapidly, gathering up a pile of papers and a red and gold book. "I've made terrible mistakes, and I don't know who I can trust anymore." He paused, and twisted the head on a nearby skeleton away from him. Man, talk about _really_ paranoid – and scared. Really scared, Danny noted. He was acting like the halfa, when Danny returned back to the US after World War II.

"Hey, easy, let's talk this through," Stan soothed. He looked really alarmed at his brother's erratic behavior, and he carefully laid a hand on his twin's shoulder.

Danny watched Ford soak in the moment of comfort – just a moment – before he twisted around, and Stan dropped his hand.

"I have something to show you," he said, with a suspicious glance at Danny. "Something you won't believe."

Stan huffed, and rolled his eyes. "Look, I've been around the world, and I've met Casper the Friendly Ghost over there," he said, jabbing a thumb at Danny. Said halfa snorted at the nickname. "Anything you say, I'll understand."

Ford nodded, and fixed piercing brown eyes on Danny, still sharp and suspicious despite the bags beneath them. "And you?"

Danny flashed Ford a weak, reassuring grin. "Dude, I'm half ghost, and from the year 2012 in another dimension," he told the twin, whose eyebrows shot up in surprise at the new information. "I'm sure it won't be as surprising as what I've been through."

Ford contemplated Danny's words, but after a moment, he nodded and moved to the side. He yanked on a specific book, and to Danny's and Stan's surprise, a hidden door swung open to reveal an elevator.

Ford led them into the elevator and pressed the "Floor 3" button. The elevator doors closed, and a shudder, the elevator began to descend.

They traveled in silence, and Danny eyed Ford's anxious fidgeting and tapping. The poor man really was a mess, he thought. Maybe he and Stan would be able to help the guy out. However, with all that Danny had seen so far, it didn't look good. It looked very suspicious. Maybe even incredibly dangerous.

Danny's suspicions were confirmed when the elevator doors opened to reveal a gigantic lab with what could only be a _portal_. To where, however, Danny did not know. Slowly, Danny's mouth slipped open, and he stared at the portal with wonder and a small kindling of _hope_.

"There is nothing about this that I understand," Stan announced loudly and immediately, eyes fixed on the strange portal. It was nearly twenty feet tall from base to ceiling, with a ten-foot circular opening suspended in the middle of the triangular device. Strange ruins and writings covered the rim of the opening, and they glowed with an ominous blue-green light.

Danny found himself snickering, especially when Ford gave his twin what could only be a look of fond exasperation before it quickly vanished.

"It's a trans-universal gateway, a punched hole through the weak spot in our dimension," Ford rattled off, stepping closer to the portal with a wave of his hands. He turned back to Stan and Danny, and continued, "I created this in order to understand the secrets of the universe." His expression then grew grave, and he warned, "But it could also be easily harnessed for _terrible_ destruction!"

Stan's heart leapt, and he caught the glimpse of hope in Danny's eyes. _This was_ _it_. _This_ was what would get Danny back home. _This_ is what would help Danny be reunited with his friends and family. And Stanford had just handed them the answer to all of Danny's problems. In the form of a giant portal that Stanley didn't understand.

"That sounds promising," Danny muttered wryly, half to himself and half to Stan, and Ford scowled.

"Yes, thank you, Peanut Gallery," he said waspishly in reply, before he turned back to his twin, who was still staring at the portal with a growing smile on his face. "Anyways, that's why I shut the portal down and hid my journals, which explain how to operate it. There's only one journal left, and I trust only you to take this."

He handed the journal over to Stan, who stared at the journal, then at his twin with confusion bordering on suspicion and fear, his budding smile gone. He looked up to meet Stanford's manic expression, and Ford gave a weary sigh.

"I have something to ask of you," he said quietly, and Danny felt like he was intruding on some personal, intimate moment. "Remember when we were kids, and we had that dream to sail around the world on a boat?"

Stan's eyebrows rose, and something akin to hope crossed his face. A small, eager smile appeared, but it swiftly disappeared when Ford aggressively said, "Take this journal, get on a boat, and _sail_ _as far away_ as you can! To the edge of the earth, and bury it, where no one can find it!"

Stan stared after Ford while his twin paced away, with disappointment and heartbreak on his countenance, before it morphed into anger.

"That's _it?!"_ he yelled at his twin, fury quickly covering up his hurt. "You _finally_ want to see me after _ten long years_ , and it's to tell me to get as far away from you _as possible?!_ "

"Stanley, you don't understand what I'm up against!" Ford snapped back immediately, still pacing. "What I've been through!"

Danny opened his mouth to hastily interrupt, to calm them down, but Stan didn't give him the opportunity to do so.

" _No_!" Stan's voice lashed out like a whip. " _You_ don't understand what _I've_ been through! I've been to prison in _three_ different countries! I once had to chew my way out of a trunk of a car!" Huh, Danny had never heard that one before. "You think _you've_ got problems?!" Stan gestured wildly at his hair, and bellowed, "I've got a _mullet_ , Stanford!"

Okay, despite the seriousness of the situation, that was pretty funny, Danny mused as he frowned at the brothers almost nose-to-nose with each other.

"Meanwhile, where have _you_ been?! Living it up in your fancy house in the woods! Selfishly hoarding your college money, because you only care about yourself!" Stan finished with a harsh jab into Ford's chest.

Ford's shocked expression quickly shifted into anger as well, and he harshly smacked Stan's hand away.

"I'm selfish? _I'm_ selfish?!" he demanded with a low edge of danger to his voice, which quickly rose in volume the longer Ford spoke. "How can you say that after costing me my _dream school_! I'm giving you a _chance_ to do the first _worthwhile_ thing in your life, and you won't even _listen_!"

"Well, listen to this!" Stan aggressively snapped, holding out the journal. He dug into his pocket, and pulled out a lighter and flicked it open. "You want me to get rid of this journal?! I'll get rid of it _right_ _now!_ "

" _No_!" Ford lunged, and six-fingered hands closed around the book. "You don't understand! This is my _life's_ work!"

Okay, this was getting out of hand. Danny stepped forward, and began, "Okay, guys, knock it off. Stan –"

However, the pair completely ignored Danny, and Stan growled, "You said you wanted me to have it, so I'll do what I want with it!" He yanked the book out of Ford's grasp, and flicked the lighter on again.

"My research!" Ford cried, and before Danny could stop him, he tacked his younger twin, knocking both the journal and the lighter out of Stan's hands.

Quickly, Danny leapt forward, and snagged both flying objects before the twins could recover. However, he realized with dread that they weren't still fighting over the journal – they were fighting _each other_.

Ford scrambled to his feet, but Stanley tripped him, sending the young scientist tumbling to the ground and through the lab's doorway. With a snarl, Stan leapt after him, bodily tackling him to the ground. Danny hurried to separate them, but a kick from both of the brothers sent him flying into a nearby machine. He gasped as searing pain split through his head, and dazed, he sank to the ground, blood already pooling from a cut on the back of his head.

Heedless to his friend's plight, Stan continued to wrestle his twin with strength fueled by anger. He managed to pin Ford against a series of buttons and switches, unaware of the powering lights and flipped switches.

The portal turned on with an ominous hum, and Danny pushed himself to his hands and knees.

" _You abandoned me all these years, you jerk! It was supposed to be us together, but you ruined my life!"_ Stan bellowed, pinning his brother down, and with a gigantic surge, Ford managed to push his brother off of him with a violent kick.

" _You ruined your own life!_ "

The kick slammed Stan back into one of the activated machines, and Danny's eyes snapped wide open when Stan screamed in utter agony. His head jerked up in time to see Stan collapse, clutching his shoulder as a faint sizzling sound echoed around the room, and Ford scrambled to his twin, eyes wide, horrified, and immediately apologetic.

" _Stanley!_ Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! Are you al – ow!"

He reeled back from the furious punch that Danny threw at him. He stumbled back into the room with the portal and tripped over a switch, while Danny sagged in exhaustion and pain.

"You – you _branded_ him!" Danny snarled despite the world tilting off-balance. "He's your _brother! And you – you -!_ "

By then, Stanley had managed to get to his feet, fury and anger towards his twin overcoming pain for the moment. He approached Stanford, seething and clutching at his burned shoulder.

"Some brother you turned out tobe," he growled, disappointment, pain, and _fury_ spilling out with every word. "You care more about your dumb mysteries than your _family?!_ Then, _you can have them_!"

He gave Ford an aggressive shove, intending to turn around and leave his brother alone, but something strange had him stopping in his tracks.

Ford, upon being pushed, began to float up into the air, and gradually, towards an ominously glowing portal. Everyone's eyes widened in fear and alarm, and Danny forced himself to straighten.

"Going ghost!" he growled under his breath, reaching for that little _spark_ of power within him. However, when he felt nothing, worry, desperation, and alarm sluiced down his back like ice. _"Going Ghost!"_

"Whoa, hey, what's happening?" Stanley yelped, and terrified brown eyes met identical ones as Ford started to float closer to the portal. "Hey, Stanford!" he rushed to the edge of the safety zone, and Ford began to yell out in desperation.

"Stanley, Stanley, help me!" he cried, frightened the nearer he drew to the portal.

"Wh – what do I do?!" Stanley demanded, _begged_ , but it was too late. Danny collapsed, unable to keep standing anymore, and Ford's jacket and legs were sucked into the portal. "FORD!"

"STANLEY! DO SOMETHING!" Ford screamed, but before he could say anything else, he disappeared into the glowing light of the portal.

"STANFORD!" Stan bellowed, but with a crackle of energy, the portal exploded, and both Stan and Danny flew back.

There was a moment as Stan tried to collect himself, and once the lights faded from his eyes and the ringing disappeared from his ears, he sat up.

"Stanford?" he asked hopefully, worriedly, but a small clatter interrupted him. His eyes landed on a pair of glasses on the cold concrete floor – Stanford's.

And in that moment, he realized that Stanford was _gone_.

Heart leaping into his throat, he raced towards the dying portal. "Stanford, I didn't mean it!" he cried, banging his fists desperately against the cooling metal. The lights around the portal began to dim, and Stan threw himself at a nearby lever. "I just got him back! I can't lose him again!"

He pulled and pushed with all his might, but when it didn't budge, he dropped it with a scream. "Oh, _come on_! STANFORD!"

Only silence greeted him.

Then, an idea struck him. He whirled around, intending to ask Danny for assistance. "Hey, Danny, you know about portals, right?! Fix -!" He stopped, and he paled.

Danny was on the ground, blood creating a sizeable pool around his head. Stan stared at his friend for a long moment, stunned, before a small voice at the back of his head told him that Danny was going to die unless he _did_ something.

"Danny! Oh, man, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" Guilt, fear, and a hundred other emotions welled up in his chest, clogged his throat, and he gulped and resisted the urge to sniff. "Hang on, you'll be okay!"

He slung Danny over his back despite the agonizing burn on his shoulder, and began to race towards the elevator. However, a familiar book caught his attention, and he slowed.

The red and gold journal sat at the edge of the lab, mocking him, taunting him for his failures. And with a heavy heart, he grabbed the journal and stuffed it in his coat pocket before rushing out of the lab.

"Please don't die," he whispered into the growing darkness.

And neither Danny nor the portal responded.

* * *

 **WHOOOO WASN'T THAT _FUN_?! I bet you guys weren't ready to go on a FEELS TRIP, were ya?!**

 **Also, I know many of you were hoping for Danny to go into the portal. I have a very good reason why I didn't do that. And no, I won't say why.**

 **Funnily enough, I was listening to cheery Disney songs while writing this. Someone please send psychological help.**

 **Okay, and another note: Let's see if we can break a new personal record for me and hit TWENTY REVIEWS THIS TIME! LES DO THIS!**

 **Posted and Edited: 11/17/2016, 10:49 PM**


	10. Chapter 10

**I have given up. Final exams, guys, final exams. They all deserve a violent, ugly death. So watch as I whittle away my precious studying time in order to give you guys a new chapter! Also, my "G" key on my keyboard is officially broken. I have dramatically chucked it out of the window, because I am _fifty shades of done._**

 **And WOW, I am so overwhelmed by all the support from you guys! Thank you so much! So close to twenty reviews! But I BELIEVE THAT WE CAN DO IT**

 **Anyways, enjoy!**

* * *

 **Chapter 10**

That night was the longest night of Stanley's life.

The hospital he rushed Danny to was nearly an hour away from the small, quaint town. Stan drove as fast as he could, praying under his breath and trying to put aside the fact that he had trapped his twin in an alternate dimension. He would handle that issue later – he had more urgent things to worry about at the moment.

However, Danny seemed to recover somewhat after they left the perimeter of Stanford's house; probably a side effect of regaining his ghost powers. Still, the halfa hadn't woken up, and he was Stan's best chance of bringing his twin back.

Not to mention his _best friend_ , a _best friend that was bleeding out in the passenger seat of the car –_

He let out a shuddering breath after Danny had been rushed to an emergency room, and melted into the hard, cold plastic seats in the hospital's waiting room. Wearily, he rubbed his eyes and buried his face into his trembling hands. He could still _hear_ Ford's cry for help ringing in his ears, and the feeling of helplessness seemed to seep into every bone in his body. What if Danny never woke up? Would Ford be okay?

He knew Ford would blame him for everything. He had heard it out of his twin's own mouth, _accusing and saying he ruined his_ _ **own**_ _life_ –

But would Danny do the same? If he even managed to pull through the surgery?

"Samuel Oak?" a doctor asked after an hour of waiting by the emergency room. Anxiously, Stan raised his head, and the doctor seemed to cringe at the devastated look on the conman's face. "Your friend, Daniel…"

"Yeah?" Stan asked, straightening and leaning forward with worry. His throat clogged up. If anything happened to Danny – he couldn't bear to finish the thought. He'd already lost someone important to him tonight; he couldn't stand to lose another.

"Your friend is recovering well. Actually, better than most. It's almost like he has some sort of superhero accelerated healing thing," the doctor reassured Stan with a grin, and the conman let out an explosive, relieved sigh, slumping in his seat. "Of course, as if that can happen, right?" the doctor laughed obliviously. He pulled up his clipboard tapped at a number circled in black, before he gave Stan a comforting smile. "It's okay to visit him – he's already awake and asking for you. He'll be upstairs, in room 322."

Stan nodded mutely, and dragged himself over to the recovery room. He stood in the doorway for a long moment, staring at Danny's lean frame and more specifically, the clean bandages covering his forehead. The heart monitor attached to the halfa's pulse beeped slowly, rhythmically, and the sound instantly began to ease Stan's frazzled nerves.

Gently, he knocked on the doorframe.

Blue eyes opened, and creased in a soft smile. "Hey."

"Hey," Stan responded automatically, not sure how else to answer. He cleared his throat roughly, and scratched at the back of his head. "Uh, so about earlier –"

"Stanley." At the quiet mention of his name, Stan clammed up. Danny was no longer smiling, but he sat up and scooted to the edge of his bed. Stan's eyes widened when his friend made to stand.

"Hey, hey, hey – Danny, wait – you should –" Stan protested, and hurried over to the halfa's side. However, when he reached the half-ghost, he was yanked into a firm hug.

"Don't worry about me," Danny murmured softly into his ear. "We'll get him back."

Stan froze, before his shoulders began to shake.

It was as if a dam had been opened in his chest, had worn down to its breaking point. Tears began to gather into the corner of his eyes, and his breath hitched.

Finally, after hours of stress and worry, it was all beginning to crash down on him, the _reality_ of their situation. Danny looked grim, but comforting and supporting all the same. And his quiet promise had finally brought Ford's predicament back to the forefront of Stan's mind, and the pain of the burn on his shoulder a stark reminder of how much he – _Stanley_ – had failed that night.

With a shudder, Stan pressed his forehead against Danny's shoulder, and began to let it out.

And so, in the middle of the night, at a hospital in the middle of Oregon, Stanley Filman Pines broke down and began to cry.

" _I'm sorry_ ," he mumbled into Danny's side. " _I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean any of it –"_

"It's okay, we'll get him back, it's okay," Danny soothed. And unbeknownst to Stan, his eyes flashed green for a moment.

"I swear it."

* * *

 **So anyone catch the reference in the chapter? Because it's taken over my life recently. Seriously, it arrived in the mail just before my first final, which was SO AGONIZING**

 **Also, friendly reminder to see if we can hit that 20-review mark! So close! Nineteen, guys, nineteen!**

 **Posted and Edited: 12/2/2016, 3:31 PM**


	11. Chapter 11

**I'm back! Thanks for waiting patiently for my finals to finish. In case anyone is interested, Accounting 2101 is the worst, and I did great in everything else. But now that the semester is over, and that work has settled back down again, I have more time to write!**

 **Also, TWENTY FRICKEN REVIEWS LAST CHAPTER! I LOVE YOU ALL! And special shoutout to Matt (guest), for correctly guessing my reference last chapter, and also, another shoutout to Slenderbrine, who not only got the reference last chapter, but ALSO THE REASON WHY.**

 **In case anyone was wondering, the reference was Oak, the false name that Stan gave to the hospital - Steven Oak is Professor Oak's full name from the Pokemon series. And guess who just got Pokemon Moon three weeks ago? :D**

 **EDIT: I have been mistaken. It is Samuel Oak (wow major fail on my part. No wonder nobody got the reference lol).**

 **But anyways, congrats to the two of you! Your obligatory short story will be at the end!**

 **Sorry about the long author's note, and enjoy!**

* * *

 **Chapter 11**

The first thing they did upon returning to Stanford's house was break the enchanted barrier that Ford had placed around the entirety of his house.

It was a simple thing – a strange, metallic cord covered in traces of salt and crushed red petals that wound around the edge of the home, against the corner of the wall and the floor. However, it was buried under a thin sheen of snow, so it took nearly half an hour to find it. Oddly enough, as soon as Danny had seen the red petals, he had paled, and backed away, refusing to touch them. In the end, Stanley had to sweep the flowers off the threshold of the house, and once all gathered, throw them away.

However, Stan was determined to have Danny walk inside the house without it being detrimental to his health. So, he didn't complain. He wasn't in the mood for it, anyways. The entire house now felt empty, _accusing_ , since Stanford's disappearance into the portal, and Stanley felt the need to keep moving, as if it would help with the guilt and shame.

The second thing they did was take care of Stanley's horrific burn mark. Stan had refused treatment at the hospital, with a quiet explanation of, "How am I going to explain this? That my twin gave it to me before I pushed him through an interdimensional portal?" Danny had shaken his bandaged head, and proceeded to gather the necessary medical supplies and inspect the burn.

It was weeping pus and blistering beyond any burn that Danny had ever seen – which was _really_ bad, considering how Danny had lived through _four_ ghost portal incidents (five if he counted the time Sam wished his powers away), and _World War II_.

The third thing they did was _sleep_. They were both exhausted after the day's events, and despite the sound of Ford screaming in his ears, Stan managed to squeeze in a few hours of rest.

The fourth thing they did was work on the portal – figure out how it worked, and try to get it started again.

Day after day they tried, oftentimes working late through the night and into the next morning. Unfortunately, they had little to no success.

"We need the other two journals," Danny finally admitted after fiddling with the control board again. "He said that the means of opening the portal were inside all three journals, and the other two ought to be hidden here in Gravity Falls."

"Yeah, genius, except _Ford_ hid the other two journals, and he's certainly not here to tell us where they are!" Stan yelled, hurling his wrench at the portal with a snarl. It bounced off with a metallic _clang,_ accompanied with Stan's frustrated bellow. "Work, damn it!"

"We'll keep trying," Danny reassured him, but the reassurance fell flat in Stan's ears. After weeks of no progress on the portal, Stan felt hopeless. Especially in the moments where he accidentally broke parts of the machine (he was no mechanic – how was he supposed to know that the electrical cords would snap apart if he tried to rewire it?).

Finally, fed up with Stan's moping and depressed mood, Danny kicked the conman out of the house in search of food at the nearest grocery store, Dusk 2 Dawn.

"Hey! Aren't you that mysterious sciency guy that lives over at that cabin in the woods?" a voice asked Stan while he was attempting to pay for food at the grocery line.

He turned around in confusion, and gulped when he realized that there was a small crowd surrounding him.

"Yeah, that Dr. Stanford Pines guy! That's you, right?" another person asked.

"Ooh, I would love to pay to see what kind of mystery science stuff you got going on in your house!"

And slowly, a smile crept over Stan's face.

* * *

"Absolutely not."

"C'mon, Casper, we gotta raise funds if we want to keep this place," Stan begged, gesturing at the dusty cabin around them. "If we turn it into a museum or something, we'll be able to keep this place _and_ keep working on the portal."

"I don't like the idea of letting other people into your twin's home just to stare at his research," Danny argued, folding his arms. But then he slumped, dropping his stiff posture with a defeated sigh. "But you're right. We need the money, and I won't be able to get a job because of my…age."

"You mean your lack of aging, Casper," Stan told him frankly, and Danny rolled his eyes.

"Oh, yeah, right, silly me, of course that's what the problem is," Danny drawled sarcastically. He rubbed tiredly at his eyes. He'd been up all night, trying to decipher the journal in hopes of finding a clue to the other journals. "Look, do what you want. But we'll need to keep this whole business down below a complete secret from everybody. Oh," Danny added with a blink, "one of my clones found strange metal signs hammered onto the trees surrounding the lot. I was going to check them out, and maybe they'll have a hint to where we can find the other journals."

"You think so?" Stan asked, and Danny hummed thoughtfully.

"I hope so. But they're only on the trees circling the clearing, so perhaps not. But it wouldn't hurt to try, right? If we want that chance of getting your brother back, we'll have to comb this entire area."

Stan scowled. "You don't have to tell me twice." He looked down at the kitchen table, where Stanford's glasses continued to sit after weeks of disuse. "…Do you think he hates me for this?" he asked in a small voice, and it broke Danny's heart to see his best friend (his only friend) look so unsure and upset.

He carefully slung an arm around Stan's shoulders, mindful of the healing burn. "Honestly, I'm sure he'd be angry, but I don't think he'll ever hate you. He did ask for you to come and help him, even after all these years of being out of contact. It means that he still trusts you."

"Yeah, he trusted me, and look where that got him," Stan sighed bitterly. He shrugged Danny's arm off. "Well, if you'll excuse me, I have a tour I have to prepare for."

* * *

 **I will admit, this chapter was a bit more difficult to write. Not as depressing as the last chapter, but still slightly upsetting nonetheless.**

 **But I digress. On to the short story!**

* * *

 **Doppelganger**

A knock on the door interrupted Stan after that first disastrous tour, and with a grumble, the conman tromped towards the door.

"Whaddya want?" he grunted as he swung it open, only to pause at the man standing before him. He looked very much like Stanford, before the portal had sucked him in - ratty, disheveled, mousy brown hair, with too-much-terror for not-enough-sleep lines of worry. He fiddled with his trembling hands, manic eyes sweeping the ground and the floor from behind thick glasses, and not daring to meet Stan's eyes.

"S-Stanford, Ah - Ah jus' wanted -" he stuttered in a thick southern accent, and Stan grunted.

"Spit it out, I don't have all day," the conman told the man.

It was then that the man raised his eyes, and connected with Stan's.

Bloodshot eyes grew to epic proportions, and he wheezed, before he took a trembling, terrified step back. "Y-yer not Stanford," he stammered in shock.

And just like that, fear and apprehension washed through Stan. His secret was going to get out, this man _knew_ Stanford, _knew_ that Stanford was supposed to be here, that _Stanley_ was just an _imposter, a doppelganger, someone that took Stanford's place_ -

"Stan?" Danny asked, appearing at the conman's elbow. Icy blue eyes swept over the nervous, _terrified_ wreck of a man, and he asked, "What's going on?"

But then, the oddest thing happened. The man, whom he later found out to be named Fiddleford McGucket, just shook his head, and stepped off the porch, looking both oddly calm and determined - a far cry from the shaking, wheezing man he was before.

"Ah'll jus' ferget 'bout it," he muttered to himself, before he wandered away, down the worn path and towards the woods. "Ah'll jus' ferget 'bout it."

And if the man's eyes seemed slightly crossed the next time they met, and that he had no recollection of _ever_ meeting the two of them - or _Stanford -_ then they didn't say a single word.

* * *

 **Hope ya'll enjoyed it! I'll see if I can have a new chapter posted sometime within the next week!**

 **Happy Holidays! And for a more non-denominational greeting, "MERRY HAPPY!"**

 **Posted and Edited: 12/19/2016, 7:54 PM**


	12. Chapter 12

**Happy Holidays everyone! I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season!**

 **I keep getting questions about Dipper and Mabel. Just be patient! They'll show up...eventually!**

 **And thanks for all of the reviews! I hope this chapter is enjoyable for y'all!**

* * *

 **Chapter 12**

"Hey, Casper, over here!"

Danny's lips quirked at the nickname, and quickly, he crossed the diner to slide into the booth seat opposite of Stan's.

"Hey, so I didn't know what you wanted, so I went ahead and ordered for you," Stan told his friend cheerfully, just as a server placed two miniature cups of ketchup and mustard in front of Danny, and a full order of pancakes in front of the conman.

Danny took a moment to stare incredulously at the order, before he shot a flat look at his friend, who snickered impishly at him. While Stan might have aged a little in the past ten years, with no mullet in sight and a hint of wrinkles, his sense of humor certainly hadn't.

"Hilarious," Danny offered drolly, before he flagged a waitress down. "Hey, can I get the number one special with an extra order of pancakes, bacon, and hash browns?"

The waitress stared at him, eyes wide, and cleared her throat. "Uh, _all_ of that, sir?" she squeaked, surprised, and Danny studied her for a moment. Bright red hair, green eyes, freckles – wasn't she dating that lumberjack guy, Teenage Dan?

Danny nodded certainly, and gave her a wide grin. "High metabolism," he offered in lieu of explanation, and the girl nodded hurriedly before making her way back to the kitchen.

Stan scowled at Danny, pointing a fork slathered in syrup at the halfa's face. "You just like draining all of my hard-earned money, don't you?" he growled, mock-seriously, and Danny nearly laughed in his face.

"Hard-earned?" he asked dubiously, learning forward across the table to swipe one of Stan's pancakes, but the tourist-trap owner blocked the fork with a snort and a clang of metal. "Stan, I _literally_ watched you cover a rock with fur and feathers in five minutes, and place it in your museum as 'A Winkleberry's Egg.' How is that hard work?"

Stan chortled aloud. "The hard work is just convincing those moneybags that it's real! I have to talk to 'em!"

Danny rolled his eyes, and this time, successfully stole one of Stan's pancakes. "My point exactly."

"Anyways, wanna explain why you're, uh…" Stan trailed off, waving at his friend. Since arriving at the diner, Danny had been covered in dirt, twigs, and leaves, and his cheeks were tinted red, with his shaggy black hair sticking in all directions. "Did you go crawling through dirt again? Or did you get stuck in another warding circle left behind?"

Danny snorted and shook his head, before one of his hands crept up to massage his sides. "Nah, I ran into one of those Leshi things mentioned in the journal."

Stan's brow furrowed, and he opened his mouth in confusion. He hadn't read the journal, other than combing through it for anything related to the portal. He basically skipped all the creature entries. "Sorry, what?"

"Leshi, it's like a forest spirit," Danny explained with a rueful shake of his head. "The journal only said that, in order to avoid being captured, you have to wear your shoes on opposite sides of your feet, and your clothes inside out, but I thought it was just a joke…"

Stan's eyebrows rose, and despite himself, he leaned forward in interest. "So, what happened?"

Danny's cheeks turned a deeper red, and he mumbled, "He took me to a cave and tried to tickle me to death."

There was a moment of silence, before Stan began to howl with laughter, banging on the table at the face of Danny's misfortune. The diner's occupants swiveled around to stare at the booth, but when all they saw was Stan laughing and pointing at the halfa, they all shrugged and returned to their meals.

Danny, however, was unamused. "So glad to hear you enjoyed my suffering," he said dryly, as their waitress set down Danny's food. When all Stan did was continue to laugh at him, Danny sulkily began to eat.

After a few minutes, Stan calmed down, wiping his eyes. "Man, I haven't laughed that hard in ages," he admitted. " _Please_ tell me you got pictures."

Danny grumbled incoherently, most likely something imprecating, but it was lost to a mouthful of crispy bacon.

A small clatter drew their attention to the edge of their table, where a small, disposable camera suddenly appeared, as if dropped by an invisible figure, and both Stan and Danny stared at it.

Then, they both lunged.

Plates and cutlery screeched as they dove for the camera, and Danny found himself getting a faceful of hash browns while Stan crowed his delight, his suit front dripping with syrup and butter.

"Hah! Victory is mine, sucker!" Stan cheered, waving the camera tauntingly before he stuffed it into his pocket. "It's hilarious how your own clones turn against you!"

"Mmmfch," Danny said into his potatoes.

"Now, boys, behave!" a loud voice interrupted them, and they both looked up into the face of the owner of the diner, Lazy Susan.

Stan felt a small twinge of guilt whenever he saw the woman's eye. It'd only been ten years since he accidentally shot her in the eye with that strange gun on the first tour of the Mystery Shack (now hidden in the depths of his office, never to be seen again), and that time had unfortunately gifted her with her new nickname, courtesy of the lazy eye. But regardless, he pasted on a bright smile, and said, "Aww, don't worry, sweet cheeks, we were just messing around! And by the way, you look yummier than a stack of pancakes, if I must say."

"You must?" Danny repeated, his voice muffled.

Stan kicked him under the table.

Susan, flattered, batted her eyes…or rather, tried to. That lazy eye made it very difficult to do so. "You flatterer! Hush, you!" She then turned to Danny, and passed the halfa a napkin. "And Danny, you haven't changed a single bit, since the day you arrived! What's your secret? You look as young as ever!"

Oh no, here it was. Stan and Danny traded worried glances with each other, and Danny opened his mouth, scrambling for an answer.

"Uh, well, it's because I have an Asian heritage, you see?" Danny fibbed quickly, shooting half-panicked looks at Stan for assistance. "I'll probably look this way until I hit fifty, like, y'know, because of menopause." And then felt the need to punch himself, as well as an _actual_ punch from his invisible clone, because _that was the stupidest excuse in the history of ever_.

Across the table, Stan stared at him, horrified, and mouthed, " _Menopause_?!"

However, Susan nodded sagely. "That's true!" she agreed loudly. "I can never tell how old you Asians are." She passed Danny another napkin, and patted his new leaf-twig-and-potato hairdo. "Stay out of trouble now!" And as she wandered away, they heard her mumble loudly to herself, "What a cutie…"

They both stared after her, mouths silently working and their brains momentarily broken, before Stan said, in a strangled tone of voice, "I think, when we get home, I'm going to have a drink, and reconsider my entire life."

Danny just nodded in agreement, to stunned for words.

And thanks to Lazy Susan, the rumor spread like wildfire, fueled by small-town gossip. He later was cornered by a very young Korean lady during his usual grocery run, who told him that he would be a very pretty woman if only he dressed like one ("What?!" Danny had squawked, mortified beyond belief, "Wait, no, I'm not a girl!"), and tried to enquire on his heritage. When Danny hastily stammered out Japanese, the young woman nodded to herself, and then wandered away, muttering, "deoleo un ilbon-saram sseulegi*," under her breath.

Needless to say, after Stan found out about the entire incident, he laughed for nearly a _week_.

* * *

 **Hope that was entertaining! I'll see if I can update again before the semester starts back up again!**

 ***Deoleo un ilbon-saram sseulegi - Filthy Japanese Scum.**

 **(And before I get complaints about racism or whatnot, let me remind you that the Koreans and the Japanese have had a rather rocky history, and a lot of Koreans are still actually biased against Japan today, and vice versa. The younger generations are not anymore, but many of the older generations still are. So fun fact! If you want more Asian facts, just grab your phones, and dial 111-867-5309 for more info!)**

 **EDIT: Don't actually call that number.**

 **Anyways, I'll see you all again in the New Year!**

 **Posted and Updated: 12/28/2016, 5:11 PM EST**


	13. Chapter 13

**Hey everyone! So, as most of you know (or, I hope you know), a new semester has started. Which means, unfortunately, that between classes and work, I'll be having less time to update. However, I do have the next chapter for you folks, so enjoy!**

 **Also, to everyone that reviewed the last chapter, thank you so much! I have hit my goal of reaching an average of ten reviews per chapter, and it's all thanks to you guys! So again, THANK YOU!**

* * *

 **Chapter 13**

Years passed since Stanford's disappearance into the portal, and both Stanley and Danny became acquainted with living within the wooden cabin. Stanley turned his brother's house into The Mystery Shack (after faking his own death and assuming Stanford's identity with a little help from the neighborhood's friendly ghost), and ran tours to raise money while Danny (the more mechanically and science-minded of the duo) worked down in the basement, trying to get the portal to work, or wander the woods and town looking for the other two journals. He didn't have much luck – his searches often ended in vain, thanks to the strange woodland creatures inhabiting the forest around the small town.

Soon, it'd been thirty-four years, and Danny woke at seven in the morning to Stan yelling into a phone. Something that happened more often than not – the number of telemarketers that tried to contact them was astounding. Danny couldn't remember having that many callers back in his old dimension.

"What? You better be sending some sort of compensation for this!" There was a pause, before Stan grumbled, "So what if I haven't met them before? Shermie, why don't you just watch them for the summer?!" Wait, Danny realized, that didn't _sound_ like a telemarketer; the conversation was all wrong. There was another beat of silence, and finally, Stan let out an explosive sigh. "Fine, fine, I'll let them come for a bit. I suppose it'll be nice to meet them – yeah, yeah, love you too, Shermie."

Groaning, Danny rose from his bed and dressed into a pair of basketball shorts and an old t-shirt, before stepping out of his bedroom. It was located next to Stan's, and across the hall from Ford's old room. The Mystery Shack had seen a lot of renovation since the change of ownership, and it was bigger than before. And while Stan couldn't care less about the upkeep of the place (because it cost money and Stan was a frugal man – frugal enough that he wouldn't waste time on anything beyond superficial appearances), Danny occasionally replaced the wallpapers, the rugs, the paints, and other necessities.

"What was that all about?" he asked Stan when he reached the kitchen.

Stan had grown in the past thirty-four years. Gone was his dark brown hair – it was now as gray as the sleek metal dishwasher that Danny recently installed. He had a heavy five o'clock shadow on his face, glasses because of his cataracts, wrinkles, and a small hearing aid. However, Danny refused to let his friend go to waste despite his age, and so forced the man to spar with him down in the basement every morning. So even though his friend was getting older, he was still in good shape.

Stan grumbled at the wireless phone in his hand, and threw it onto its charging dock. "My oldest brother – Shermie, you remember him? He wants me to watch his grandkids for the summer. Their parents have some stuff to work out, and they wanted the kids to stay with him, but he's going through Chemotherapy and won't be able to take care of them."

"So they'll be staying here for the summer?" Danny asked, leading the way down into the basement past the vending machine. They replaced the old bookshelf with something a little more innocuous, modern, and non-cliché to hide the secret passage, and it came with a bonus – snacks. "When are they coming?"

"Tomorrow. We'll just have to be careful to not let them see anything too suspicious," Stan grumbled. He barely glanced at the portal before they began their spar, and Stan ducked Danny's swift jab. "We're getting close. I can feel it."

Danny grinned, a tired, old smile on his youthful face. "I agree. We've got nearly everything fixed up – we just need to figure out the right combination of pressure and codes to get it started again."

They continued to spar, and like usual, Danny emerged triumphant.

"It's not fair," Stan complained for the thousandth time in nearly forty years as they made their way back up to the main floor and began their breakfast. "You have like ninety years on me, with actual military training."

"It probably doesn't help that my mom was a ninth degree blackbelt, and that she trained me, too," Danny agreed easily, pulling out his cell and flicking through his stocks. "Made another ten thousand today from that investment into Harvey's. They're really doing well."

"Y'know, this makes me glad you're my friend," Stan cackled as he opened up the fridge. "It makes playing the stock market so much easier. Those poor Wall Street suckers don't know what hit 'em."

Danny shrugged carelessly, and stowed his phone away. "It's not my fault this dimension is pretty much the same as my own," he replied cheerily. He began to prepare himself a cup of coffee. "It was the easiest way to raise money for what we need once we got internet service here."

"Yeah, and we'll probably need to make more in order to provide for the two little gremlins that'll be living under our roof," Stan mused as he began to crack eggs open into a pan, and Danny rolled his eyes. It's not like kids were _that_ expensive. "Think they'll be any good at counterfeiting?"

Danny shot Stan a disapproving glare over the top of his mug. "Stanley Filman Pines, _no_."

Stan shrugged, not perturbed in the least from Danny's glare. "Eh, I'll see when they get here. What do kids like to do these days, anyways?"

"Video games," Danny replied easily, remembering his favorite pastime as a teen. "We have that old Atari system, which is probably retro-enough that they'll like it, but not spend all their time on it."

"I'm sorry, retro – what?" Stan asked, frowning and rubbing his head in confusion. "I don't understand this generation. How do you even keep up?"

Danny smirked. "Probably because I was originally a part of this generation in the first place, Stan. It's you old-timers that I have trouble keeping up with," he teased. "Like the eighties? What was up with that?"

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," Stan muttered sourly as he tipped fried eggs onto a plate. "I never understood your aversion for bell-bottom pants until ten years later."

Someone knocked on the front door, and before either Danny or Stan could react to it, it opened.

"Good morning, Mr. Pines! Mr. Fenton!"

Jesus "Soos" Ramirez began working for the pair ten years ago, mostly because he loved the Mystery Shack. And mostly because Danny couldn't be bothered with fixing and cleaning everything unless it was necessary, simply because he was gone most of the time. Soos was a big guy, and was once told by Stan that he looked like a giant, hairless gopher. He was also not the smartest guy on the block ("Hey, Danny, dude, I swear, you're, like, getting younger every time I see you! Those meds you take must be great!"). He was a pretty amicable guy, however, and got along well with Danny, Stan, and the Shack's only other employee, Wendy Corduroy.

Wendy had only been working at the shack since the previous summer as a cashier girl in the Mystery Shack's gift shop. She was laid-back, easygoing, and probably one of the more terrifying girls that Danny had ever met. She did lumberjack competitions with her family, knew how to wield an axe like a pro, and had impeccable aim.

"Soos, good timing," Danny said, taking a slice of fried egg and chewing on it. "We're going to be having more company this summer."

"Really?" Soos asked eagerly, pulling up a seat at the neat kitchen table. "Who?"

"My older brother's grandchildren," Stan grumbled, beginning to cook a small pile of bacon. "Shermie can't watch them for the summer, so they'll be coming here to stay with us."

"Cool! It'll be nice to have some other people at the shack for once!" Soos said excitedly, and Danny clapped the young mechanic on the shoulder.

"We thought that it would be a good idea for you to turn the attic into a third bedroom for the kids," Danny informed him. He fished into his pocket, and pulled out his wallet, before handing a wad of cash over to the mechanic. "Use that to get it set up and ready – y'know, beds, a carpet – actually, wait, why am I telling you this?" he sighed, snatching the money back and stowing his wallet away. He grabbed a few pieces of bacon and made his way to his bedroom to freshen up. "Knowing you, you'll probably decorate the room with Pac Man memorabilia or something."

"Haha, you got me, dude!" Soos chuckled good-naturedly. "Totally was thinking of that!"

Danny rolled his eyes, and stepped into the bedroom, in time to hear Stan lecture Soos about the state of the public bathrooms.

He had a lot to prepare for tomorrow.

* * *

 **So, who's excited for Dipper and Mabel? :D**

 **Also decided that since Sherman (Shermie) is about 10 years older than the Stan twins, him being around 70-something and having to go through Chemotherapy would be a good reason why the twins came to spend the summer with their "Grunkle Stan." Also, I feel like it's implied that the twins' parents aren't doing too well in their marriage, hence the reason why the twins are in Gravity Falls in the first place. So their parents can get stuff worked out. But that's just me.**

 **EDIT: SO IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION THAT MY GRAVITY FALLS TRIVIA IS SEVERELY LACKING APPARENTLY. So for the above statement about my own decisions/opinions regarding Shermie's age or Stan being there for the twins' birth, I DO WHAT I WANT BECAUSE THIS. IS. FAAANNNFICTIONN!**

 **Anyways, I'll have the next chapter out in a bit, so review! They give me life and also remind me of my priorities. Like writing for this and not chasing after brother-betraying dwarves in Dragon Age 2. Or listening to Fenris bitch about his lot in life.**

 **Posted: 1/25/2017, 5:04 PM EST**

 **Edited: 1/25/2017, 5:56 PM EST**


	14. Chapter 14

**Sorry about the wait! I meant to post earlier, but work, classes, and a stressful birthday unfortunately said I had other plans. So here we are! Also, THIRTY REVIEWS FOR THE LAST CHAPTER I COULD KISS YOU ALL! THANK YOU!**

 **Anyways, I know you all were WAITING for this chapter. So, enjoy!**

* * *

 **Chapter 14**

"Welcome to the Mystery Shack!"

A pair of twins, a boy and a girl, squinted up at the older man. The sight of them originally sent pangs of guilt and longing through Stan. Twins, just like him and Stanford. But quickly, he brushed it aside in favor of giving the pair a cheesy smile. "I'm your Great-Uncle Stan. Call me Grunkle, though, because it takes too long to say Great-Uncle, and time is money!"

The girl of the pair seemed to take an immediate liking to her "Grunkle" Stan, because she flung herself at Stan with a bright smile and a hug, like a squirrel dosed with too much caffeine and glitter.

"I'm so glad to meet you! I'm Mabel, and this is Dipper!" she said enthusiastically. She lowered her voice, as if conspiratorially, but her voice still carried across the clearing. "He's not too happy about being here."

"Still can hear you, Mabel," the boy groused, coming to stand next to his twin with a sulk. Danny studied the pair. They were short, on the brink of puberty and growth spurts. Both had thick chestnut hair, much like Stan's when he was a young man in the seventies and eighties, and were nearly identical, if it weren't for their clothes, their hairstyles, their genders, and the difference in facial expressions. Mabel looked happy to be there, an explosion of glitter and smiles, but Dipper looked like someone had murdered his dog and was seeking revenge.

All in all, they were kinda cute.

"Nice to meet you, kids," Stan said brightly, and he gestured towards Danny, who gave the pair of twins a small wave of greeting and a wide smile. "This is Danny Fenton, co-owner of the Mystery Shack and a family friend."

Danny could have sworn that Mabel's eyes grew three times their original size when they landed on him, and beside her, Dipper groaned.

"Mabel, no," he sternly told his twin, but the young girl threw herself at the halfa. Danny and Stan watched with amusement as she leaned in towards the halfa, like she was sharing some sort of deep secret.

"On a scale of one to America, how free are you tonight, handsome?" she asked eagerly, batting her eyes, and there was a _thwack_ noise as Dipper smacked his forehead in frustration. Danny, on the other hand, burst out into incredulous, raucous laughter at the ridiculous pickup line while Stan chortled.

"Uh, Mabel, was it?" At the girl's nod (whose gaze never left Danny, who began to howl with laughter, nearly bent double in a futile attempt to reign in his mirth), Stan continued, "Mabel, he's _way_ too old for you. Trust me on this."

She deflated, disappointed, before she perked up. "Well, I'm sure I'll have other opportunities to woo boys while I'm here," she said optimistically, before she started to make her way into the house. She stopped, however, at the front porch, bent over, and said, "Hello, my good worm sir! How are you this fine day?"

"Is she serious?" Danny choked out, wiping his eyes, a little confused but mainly amused by the girl's quirkiness, and Dipper sighed in aggravation.

"Yeah, all the time," he answered with a grumble. Danny smiled. He could only imagine what it was like to have a sister like Mabel – Jazz was mostly normal, save for her ability to come up with the _stupidest_ names on this side of the ghost zone. And maybe her own, ghost-hunting abilities.

"Sounds like fun." Danny turned to Dipper, and gestured inside with a quick jerk of his head. "Well, why don't we show you around?"

"Sounds _great_ ," the young man grumbled sarcastically, and Danny chuckled at the belligerence, before he turned to Stan.

"Hey, Stan, don't you have a tour starting soon?" he asked, and Stan yelped, glancing at his watch, before hurrying back towards the shack.

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do, Casper!" he called over his shoulder, and Danny groaned.

"That's, like, everything except for murder," he called back, and ignored Stan's cackle in favor of Dipper's quiet, "Casper?"

"Nickname that Stan gave me a long time ago," Danny said with an exaggerated roll of his eyes and a wink. "Keeps complaining that I keep popping up like a ghost."

"Alright," Dipper conceded, and followed Danny into the house.

* * *

Thirty minutes later, the twins had settled in their new room, and Danny watched them play outside.

Mabel looked like she was having a blast, rolling down hills covered in grass with a squeal of delight, but Dipper, on the other hand…

"He looks like he's trying not to straight up _jack_ someone's car," Wendy commented with an easy laugh, looking out of the window.

Danny leaned against the window sill. "Maybe he'll make a friend with that woodpecker," he said, pointing at the woodpecker that was pecking at the dark green and brown hat on Dipper's head. He spotted someone creeping closer to the kid, and groaned. "Oh, no, Stan, _don't_ , he just got here –"

" _Boo!_ " he heard Stan shout through the ridiculous fish-head mask, and with a squeal, the male twin fell over to Stan's uproarious laughter.

Stan continued to laugh, until a coughing fit overtook him, and pounding on his chest, he gasped out, "Ah, it was worth it!"

Dipper did not look impressed.

Danny sighed, and headed out to shoo Stan back to the tour group he was supposed to be leading.

* * *

"So, Danny," said a coy voice, arms draping over the side of the couch by Danny's head, and Mabel's brace-filled smile entered his line of sight, "How long have you lived in Gravity Falls?"

Danny hummed, tapping the remote and watching the channels flick by on the TV. It was late in the evening, and they had just finished closing the Mystery Shack for the day. Stan was still checking inventory and profits for the day, while Danny relaxed by the television. "A good long while," the halfa replied evasively, pausing on a channel that blared something about "Throwable Hedgehogs" (" _What_?" Danny spluttered under his breath), before he continued flicking through the channels.

A small hand touched his hair, and he heard a crooned, " _Oooh, soft_ ," before Mabel began to bury her fingers in his thick locks. "Yeah, but how'd you wind up here? How'd you end up opening the Mystery Shack?"

Dipper, Danny noticed, had perked up in the corner of the room, despite his eyes being fixed on a thick book scrounged up from the dark recesses of Stan's room. _Ten Things to Avoid When Talking to Women_ , the title read, and Danny bit back a chuckle, before he turned his attention back over to Mabel's question.

"Well, I met Stan in Mexico," Danny said, and watched both Mabel and Dippers' eyes widen.

" _Mexico_?" The fingers dropped from his hair, and suddenly his lap was occupied by a young, curious, pubescent female. "What were you doing in Mexico?"

"Yeah, what _were_ you doing in Mexico, Casper?" a new voice repeated sarcastically, and Danny's blue eyes flashed up to crinkle in amusement at Stan, who stood in the doorway of the living room.

"Well, a _certain_ _someone_ had landed himself in prison with the _funniest_ excuses, so _of course_ I had to go and spend some time with him, keep him company," Danny drawled, and both he and Stan laughed at the open-mouthed, befuddled faces on the twins' faces.

"You were in _prison_?!" Dipper squawked after a moment, "You _met_ in a prison?!"

"More like he stalked me there," Stan added cheerfully, and Danny tried not to laugh as the twins' brains seemed to explode at the added information. After a beat, Mabel seemed to recover.

"What was it like?" she asked curiously, reaching up to poke Danny's cheek, and the halfa beamed.

"Not bad; Stan and I tried to guess what the mystery meat in the daily dinners was," he replied.

"Popular vote was rat," Stan offered with a nod of his head, and the two of them had the delight of watching both twins turn a faint tinge of green.

"You know what?" Dipper's voice was higher than usual, and he closed his book, tossed it to the side, and rose to his feet. "I think – ah," his voice cracked, and he cleared it before continuing, "I think we should get to bed. G'night, Grunkle Stan, Danny!"

"Y-yeah, night!" And just like that, both twins were gone, the sound of their feet pounding up the stairs receding after a moment.

Stan and Danny waited with bated breath as a door faintly slammed, before they burst into loud laughter.

"Oh man," Stan cackled, rubbing his eyes and shaking his head. "Did you see their _faces_?"

"I wonder what they'll think now that they know we've been to prison," Danny said mirthfully, before he rose to his feet. "Well, think we should head down, now that the twins are in bed?"

And chuckling, the headed into the gift shop, tapped the code into the vending machine, and descended into the dark basement.

* * *

 **Next chapter we'll be starting the series proper, so be ready for that!**

 **Posted and Edited: 2/15/2017, 5:15 PM EST**


	15. Chapter 15

**So, I have a bit of a surprise for you folks! For being so wonderful and reviewing!**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

 **Chapter 15**

Ford hissed and pulled his bleeding arm closer to his body. He had hoped that dimension 254 would have a clue to return him home, but it seemed like all avenues had been blocked. And he had run out of hope a _long_ time ago.

Maybe _Bill_ had a hand in it. In keeping him moving through dimensions, always traveling, but never able to return home.

But the sudden explosion to his left and the shrapnel that had sliced his arm open currently had him ducking into an alleyway of this fairly-sized town. He'd never heard of it before, but it was somewhere in this dimension's Colorado, and had seemed like a good place to rest before continuing to look for a solution. In fact, he had been _relieved_ at how _normal_ this place was, how _similar_ it was to his home dimension despite being decades ahead, that he had relaxed and decided to stay for a bit.

And, well, it _seemed_ like a good idea until unearthly green blasts had lit up the town in an eerie, washed-out color.

The citizens of this town, however, had reacted very oddly. They had quickly and efficiently moved away from the blast site, as if in a _practiced_ motion, and none of them were really _panicking_. It was almost as if they were used to all the explosions and disturbances.

Very odd, Ford concluded as he began to hastily tend to his arm. Thankfully, his foray into dimension number 147 had left him with a number of advanced healing supplies, and so his wound was quickly taken care of and knitting itself back into smooth skin.

With that taken care of, he dug into his heavy beige trench coat and pulled out a gun. It was sleek, with an otherworldly sheen and a strange shape. It hummed when he flicked it on, and Ford leaned around the corner of the alley, sharp brown eyes behind goggles cutting through the smoke and dust.

" _Tell me where he is_!" roared a mechanical voice, and a flash of green lit up the area again.

"Give it up, Ghost X!" a female voice bellowed, accompanied by another flash of green. "You think we _know?!_ We've been searching for _months_!"

"Jazz?" another female voice said sourly, exasperatedly, "It's _Skulker_."

Ghosts, huh? Stanford mused as the smoke began to clear. Down the street, he could make out a floating, glowing figure aiming guns at a pair of young, armored women. He hadn't really encountered ghosts before. Only one or two, before all his troubles _really_ started.

He glanced down at his gun, before he stowed it away. He didn't think that his laser blaster would have an effect on the being – it required the laser to hit a _physical_ entity to deal damage, which ghosts were not. Not really.

He glanced back down the street, and raised his gray bushy eyebrows. The two women began to battle against the ghostly being with a great deal of skill. Of course, that could have been inferred from the fact that they knew the ghost's _name_ – or, at least, one of them did. But the proficiency that they attacked the ghost with indicated that they had a lot of experience fighting ghosts.

However, he could hardly stand around and watch, especially when the redheaded woman received a blast to her chest with a shriek of pain. The force of the blast sent her rolling to the pavement nearby, her gun slipping from her grasp to land with a clatter near his feet.

" _Jazz!_ " the other woman screamed, a lean figure with dark hair, pale skin, and a ferocious scowl. She pressed a hand to her ear while she dodged another blast. "Tucker, what the _hell_ is taking you so long?!"

The ghost in the air cackled, and Ford watched with alarm and fear as panels opened in its shoulders, and rows and rows of rockets rose, all aimed at the redheaded woman.

Ford didn't even hesitate. He threw himself at the fallen, groaning figure, snatched her gun, and seized her along the waist. And with a grunt of exertion, he dragged her into the alley, stepped out, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

It was heavier than his laser gun, and awkward in his six-fingered grasp, but he didn't let that stop him. The green beam that exploded out of the gun's barrel slammed into one the rockets on Skulker's shoulders, and the ghost let out a roar of pain and fear when it set off a chain reaction in the other rockets. A small panel in its head opened, and Ford's eyebrows rose when he saw a smaller, green blob dart out of the escape hatch.

The young, black-haired woman aiming at the ghost let out a noise of surprise, purple eyes wide, and lowered her gun. However, she quickly seized a small container attached to her hip, aimed it at the ghost, uncapped it – wait, was that _a soup thermos_? – and pressed a button.

Ford watched in curiosity as a bright blue beam shot out to intercept the fleeing ghost.

"Fascinating," he muttered to himself as it seemed to suck the small, bean-shaped creature away from the suit and into the thermos. "Some kind of temporal space to hold a spiritual entity?"

The other woman glanced at him with surprise, before she smirked and nodded. Once the creature was safely inside the cylinder, she capped it and turned to face him. Behind her, the suit crashed to the ground, fizzling, unmoving, and _empty_.

Her eyes landed on the gun in his hand, and she smiled. "You were the one that shot Skulker's rockets?" she asked.

Interesting how her smile didn't reach her eyes, Stanford noted. They seemed to hold a weary, tired expression, despite the way her lips curved across her face.

Kind of the way he looked when he saw himself in the mirror.

Like he had given up.

"Well, yes," he muttered, handing the gun back and quickly shoving his hands into his pockets. He hoped she hadn't caught a glance of his hands. In the dimensions closest in similarity to his old one, his hands always seemed to stir a negative reaction. "Your friend is fine," he reassured the woman. "She's in the alley, just over there."

"Sam?" Speak of the devil, Ford thought as the redheaded woman appeared, one hand pressed to a blackened chest plate. She winced as she moved closer to the pair, and trained bright, teal eyes on her friend. "You got him?"

Sam smirked and shook the thermos in answer. Ford could hear a faint yell emanating from the sleek metal device, before the young woman planted it back onto her hip. Jazz relaxed, and winced again when she shifted painfully.

"Good. Of course, it had to happen the month that mom and dad are gone," she sighed. She then turned her attention to her rescuer. "Well, enough of that. I'm Jazz Fenton, and this is Sam Manson." Ford frowned. Something sounded oddly familiar in that statement, despite never having met the pair before, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

He watched as Jazz held out a hand, and the researcher shifted hesitantly, before he reached out to clasp her hand with his six-fingered one. They would find out eventually, he reasoned to himself with a touch of dread.

Jazz's eyes widened for a single moment, and flashed up to meet his gaze, but when she saw his expression of nervous anticipation and finality, she instead smiled and warmly shook his hand.

And Ford felt a part of himself relax. "Nice to meet you. The name's Stanford Pines." And something in the way that Jazz's eyes assessed him niggled his brain.

Huh, odd.

"So," he began, quickly dropping Jazz's hand. "Ghost hunters?"

"Yeah, started in high school and have continued it since," Sam said lazily, but her light violet eyes hadn't left his face, wary and assessing. "What about you? Government official?"

"What? Oh, no, never," Ford grumbled. "I've never had very good experiences with the government." _Of any dimension_ , he added in his mind, and watched the two women relax minutely. "More like a researcher, that got sucked up into his work." _Literally._

Jazz brightened. "Oh? What's your field of research? Mine is Psychology and how it affects ghostly and supernatural entities."

Ford shrugged. "I have twelve PhDs, but I do have a deep interest in the supernatural," he said, sheepishly wiggling his fingers in lieu of an explanation. "But I wasn't expecting ghosts, to be honest."

"Really?" Jazz asked with wonder, before her eyes narrowed in suspicion. "I've never heard of a doctor by the name of Stanford Pines in anything supernatural during my research."

Sam tensed, and Ford saw her hands clench into fists. Slowly, he slid his hands into his pockets and tried to pretend the motion was casual. Carefully, his hand wrapped around the familiar grip of his laser gun.

"I –" he began, but another voice interrupted him.

"Sam! Jazz!" An African-American man hurried up to them, panting and wheezing for air. He bore thick dreadlocks, a small goatee, glasses, and a beanie

Sam folded her arms in disapproval. "Tucker, you're too late," she chided, but Tucker shook his head.

"Sorry, I was at the library researching possible portals and ways to communicate with Danny –" he began, but Stanford's brain screeched to a halt.

 _Danny. Jazz Fenton._

 _ **Danny Fenton**_ **.**

" _And who is this?!"_

" _Danny Fenton, Stanley's traveling companion and best friend."_

" _You brought a person_ possessed _by a_ ghost _into my_ home _, Stanley?!"_

" _My name is Danny Fenton, and my parents' research into the paranormal accidentally turned me into a half-ghost, or halfa, if you will. Happy?"_

"Danny Fenton?" he breathed in surprise and shock, mind whirling. But, this was a completely different dimension than his own and he had met Danny back in Gravity Falls, in his _own dimension_ –

The three young adults before him froze, staring at him with a stunned silence, before they jumped into action.

A gun was pressed against his throat in an instant. "How do you know that name?! I thought you said you weren't part of the government!" Sam snarled in his face, her eyes burning with violet fire, and Stanford quickly raised his hands in the universal (or multi-universal, in his case) plea of surrender.

"I met him, back in the seventies!" Stanford exclaimed worriedly, his eyes darting between the three young adults surrounding him.

"That doesn't make sense!" Sam bellowed furiously, pressing the gun harder against his throat, and the strange device began to emit a dangerous hum. "Danny was born in the nineties! There's no way you could have met him then!"

"Wait, wait, Sam, do you think the portal sent him into an alternate _time_ as well as an alternate dimension?!" Tucker hastily added, shoving Sam's gun away from Stanford's throat. The tall man breathed a faint sigh of relief, Tucker's previous words sent his mind screeching to a halt.

 _Alternate dimension?! These people know about alternate dimensions?!_

Gloved hands seized his jacket, and Ford's forehead was nearly sent smashing into Jazz's own face as she shook him, roughly, _desperately_. "Have you seen him?! What does he look like?!"

"U-uh," he stammered, a little cowed by the ferocity Jazz seized him with. He racked his brain, trying to recall the exact event of that night, nearly forty years ago. "He's uh, tall, with black hair and blue eyes, and, well, he tried to enter my home, which has wards against supernatural beings, but it seemed to work on him, but only part-way, before I discovered that he was half-ghost –"

The longer he talked, the wider the others' eyes became. Jazz's hands fell limply from his jacket, and to Ford's complete surprise, she burst into tears.

"That's him!" she sobbed, half-laughing, half-crying in relief. " _That's_ _him_!"

Sam was shaking her head in disbelief, but she gave him a wobbly, forgiving smile. Her eyes also seemed suspiciously wet, and Tucker, beside her, was mouthing, "No way," over and over in shock and surprise.

Ford shifted uncomfortably, but a hand on his shoulder, Jazz's hand, had him looking back at the redhead.

"Come with us, and tell us _everything_ ," she insisted.

And judging from the strength of the grip she had on his shoulder, he didn't have a choice but to agree.

* * *

 **I can imagine you're all freaking out right now :) So I'll let you bask in the wake of this little interlude.**

 **More Dip-Dop and Mabes in the next chapter, I promise. Next chapter will actually be the start of the series, so look forward to that!**

 **Posted and Edited: 2/22/2017, 4:38 PM EST**


	16. Chapter 16

**I have no apologies for the late update. Because, as many of you know, the new Zelda: _Breath of the Wild_ game came out...and it is AMAZING. So yeah that happened. I've been warning people that once March hit, I'd be gone. Like, GONE. Because, the new Zelda game, and also...the new Mass Effect game came out today. So there goes the rest of my spring. I'd thought I'd get this out before I was sucked into a whole new upsetting plotline. **

**Thanks for all the reviews! You guys are the real champs, with all of your insightful comments and input. Also, for dealing with my tardiness with grace. Thank you so much!**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

 **Chapter 16**

A few days after the twins settled in, and a disastrous "family bonding activity" that forced Danny to bail the twins and their Great Uncle out of the county jail for counterfeiting ("You're lucky I like you so much," Danny had growled to Stan in the middle of the night at the county jail, scribbling out a check, "Because otherwise your body would be in the middle of the woods, where no one can find it." Stan had drastically paled and had been uncharacteristically nice to Danny for a few days afterwards), Stan had stepped into the gift shop, burping from Pitt Cola, and holding a bunch of signs.

"…I wouldn't be surprised if the man of my dreams walked through that door right now!" Mabel finished cheerfully, but her expression quickly morphed into one of disgust when her Grunkle Stan stepped through the doorway. "Oh, why?" Mabel cried to the heavens in despair while Dipper laughed at her.

"Alright, alright, look alive, people!" Stan ordered, waving his free hand around. "I need someone to go hammer up these signs in the spooky part of the forest."

"Not it," both the twins immediately cried, and Soos, who was up on a stepladder with a screwdriver, announced, "Uh, also not it."

"Nobody asked you, Soos," Stan told the handyman flatly.

"I know," Soos said seriously, "and I'm comfortable with that." He took a bite out of a bar of chocolate, and annoyed, Stan turned to his only female employee.

"Wendy! I need you to put up these signs!"

Wendy didn't even look up from her magazine as she "tried" to grab for the signs. "I would, but I can't reach it," she said, faking grunts of exertion, her eyes still glued to the magazine article.

"I'd fire all of you if I could," Stan announced to the room, aggravated, before he decided, "Alright, I'll just pick someone to go. Eenie, meenie, miney – you."

"Aww, what?" Dipper complained when his Grunkle's eyes fell on him. "Grunkle Stan, whenever I'm in those woods, I feel like I'm being watched."

"Ugh, not this again," Stan groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"I'm telling you, something is seriously weird about this town!" Dipper insisted. "Just today, my mosquito bites spelled out the word, "Beware!" He pushed up his sleeve, and showed his Great-Uncle the marks.

Stan squinted. "That says, "Bewarb," he pointed out, and flushing, Dipper scratched at his arm before pulling away. Stan sighed. "Look, kid, the monsters in the forest thing is local legend. Drummed up by guys like me, to sell merch to guys like that." He pointed at a particularly overweight, sweaty customer that was nearly salivating over a Stan bobblehead. "So quit being so paranoid! It's probably Danny half the time anyways – he practically lives in those woods," Stan finished, tossing Dipper the signs.

With a yelp, the teen barely managed to catch them all. "Alright, fine," he relented, and stalked out of the shop.

* * *

"Seriously?" Danny asked incredulously, frowning at the large group of gnomes trying to pin him down. He easily shook two of them off his arm, and watched them bounce like hacky-sacks. "It's been almost thirty years – this will never work."

"Just humor us!" the leader of the gnomes, Jeff, cajoled, standing on a nearby rock and flailing his arms. He was in good form today, Danny noticed, his clothes all clean, his beard freshly trimmed, his pointed hat perfectly straight and sleek; was he meeting with someone later? "We're practicing for our future queen!"

Danny rolled his eyes, and easily phased through the ropes. Some of the gnomes at his feet gnashed their teeth in frustration, while others let out dejected sighs as he slipped through their ropes… _again_. Danny shook his white-haired head in exasperation. "Seriously, guys, it was funny the first five times, but after thirty years of this, enough is enough. I've got work to do."

"You always say that!" Jeff cried, waving little fists. "You never give us the opportunity to practice mating techniques with a human! We need to be ready for when we find our queen!"

"Uh, first of all, _yikes_ , second of all, _never_ going to happen," Danny told the group, nose twisted up in disgust and mild alarm. "I'm leaving – wait." Danny stopped as a thought occurred to him. "Did you guys steal our prop cowboy hat, cover it in popsicle sticks, and set it on fire last week?"

Sweat broke out on Jeff's head, and the gnomes surrounding Danny all began to whistle "inconspicuously," each avoiding Danny's glowing green gaze with fervor. "I – uh, I have no idea what you're talking about," Jeff squeaked, rocking back and forth on the heels of his feet, studiously avoiding meeting the halfa's eyes, and Danny let out a loud, disbelieving snort.

"Sure, and I'm the Queen of England," he replied wryly, before he fixed Jeff with a firm glare. "Don't do it again, or I'm shaving off all of your beards in your sleep. Again."

Jeff's hands darted to his beard, and all of the gnomes shuddered in horror.

"You wouldn't!" Jeff shrieked girlishly, and the gnomes surrounding Danny whimpered in fear.

Danny's answering grin was a combination of teeth and promise. "Want to test that?"

"Fine, fine, we'll put the magical flame stick back where we found it!" Jeff hurriedly promised, and Danny snickered at the unfortunate gnome tribe.

"Good." And with that, Danny vanished.

He had a grocery trip to run.

* * *

An hour later, the halfa came back in time to hear Mabel proudly announce, "This girl's got a date! Woot woot!"

"Wait a second, in the thirty minutes I was gone, you already found a date?" asked Dipper, flabbergasted, and Mabel replied happily, "Guess I'm _irresistible_!" The doorbell rang, and Danny heard the pitter-patter of feet running.

"Coming!" Mabel called excitedly, and there was a pause before he heard Stan ask over Dipper's yelp of surprise, "Whatcha readin'?"

"U-uh, uh –" Dipper stammered, fumbling, before his voice lifted questioningly, " _Gold Chainz for Old Men_ Magazine?"

"That's a good issue," Stan commented obliviously, as Danny entered the room. "Danny, where've you been all day?"

Danny rolled his eyes, and held up a small bag of groceries. He dug into the bag and pulled out a package, before he tossed it to Stan. "Getting fudge and toffee peanuts."

"Casper, my man, you're the greatest friend an old man can ask for!" Stan cheered, easily catching the bundle of sweetened nuts and pretending to wipe a tear from his eye. "Rich, smart, caring – it warms the cockles of my blackened heart!"

"Hey everybody!" Mabel interrupted enthusiastically, standing in the doorway with a hunched figure in a black hoodie. "Come say hello to my new boyfriend!"

The hoodie was a little torn, and there were leaves sticking out of it, but the figure turned around to reveal a familiar face to Danny (was that strawberry jam on his chin?). The figure raised his hand, and said, hoarsely, "Sup."

"Hey," Dipper said slowly, and Stan took a gulp of his Pitt Cola.

"How's it hanging?" he asked casually.

Danny narrowed his eyes at the "teen" standing next to Mabel. Said teen had paled a little when he saw the halfa, but straightened in determination, as Mabel gushed, "We met at the cemetery! He's _really_ deep! Oh!" Her eyes widened as she felt the "teen's" arm. "Oh, uh, a little muscle there! What, uh, what a surprise!"

"So…what's your name?" Dipper asked awkwardly, and the "teen," his eyes still fixed on Danny, stammered, "Uh, N-normal – man!"

"He means Norman," Mabel corrected dreamily.

Dipper frowned in confusion, and pointed at the teen's face. "Are you bleeding?"

"It's – uh – jam!" Mabel's new boyfriend called out frantically, and Dipper's eyes narrowed suspiciously. He spotted the worried glance that "Norman" threw at Danny, but when Dipper's eyes landed on Danny, all he saw was a frown. Nothing strange at all.

Maybe Norman thought that Danny was an overprotective cousin or something, Dipper concluded.

Mabel, oblivious to all of this, gasped, and hit Norman hard in the chest. "I _love_ jam! Look at _this_!"

"So – uh, you wanna go – hold hands, or whatever?" Norman asked Mabel hesitantly, and Mabel giggled, flustered and enchanted.

"Oh, oh, of _course_! Don't wait up!" she called to her family before she zoomed out of the house. Norman did an about face, walked into the wall, and stumbled, and then trailed after her.

Dipper was now highly suspicious, and Danny could tell. But before he could say anything about it, Stan settled into the couch with his "Gold Chainz" magazine, and Dipper ran off without another word.

Danny purposefully waited until Stan was taking a sip of his Pitt Cola. "So, did you know that Mabel is currently dating a bunch of gnomes right now?"

Stan inhaled and spat out his drink in shock, and Danny laughed at him. "W-wait, what?!"

"Yeah, that was Jeff the Gnome at the top. They're probably all standing on top of each other underneath that jacket. I wonder how long until the twins find out," Danny wondered.

"Hmph," Stan grumbled, wiping his mouth and picking up his magazine again. "Just make sure the little gremlins don't hurt her or anything."

"I won't. They're mostly harmless anyways," Danny promised.

He neglected to mention that they were responsible for the "Burning Western Popsicle Incident" last week.

* * *

Danny tried to keep an eye on the kids.

Sort of, but not really. There wasn't much that they could encounter in the woods that was _truly_ dangerous that was within the Mystery Shack's borders, and he'd gotten a glimpse of Mabel flirting with her new "boyfriend" while Dipper suspiciously recorded the entire "date" with his video camera.

However, Danny did get sidetracked when a customer tried to demand a refund (Danny had a _thing_ for this – if someone could successfully stare the halfa down after ten minutes, they got the refund. And that rarely happened). Ten minutes later, Danny was watching the now-docile man leave, and he turned to Wendy, who had wandered back into the shop during the staring contest.

"Wendy, have you seen the twins?" he asked, and the redhead shrugged.

"I gave Dipper the keys to the golf cart a while ago, dunno where he went," she replied lazily, head already buried in a magazine. Danny frowned, and thought, _why the golf cart?_

Stan stepped back into the shack, humming happily at the successful conclusion of yet another tour full of moneybags and scams. He strode over to the cash register, roughly elbowed Danny out of the way, and turned to Wendy.

"Hey, you clocked out yet?" he demanded, and when Wendy just stared blankly at him, he scowled thunderously. "Get out of here! I'm not paying you for overtime!"

Wendy saluted and swiftly gathered her things, vaulting over the counter. "See ya tomorrow, Mr. Pines, Danny!"

Seconds later, she was out the door.

Danny turned his attention to Stan, who was beginning to tally the profits they made for that day. "Did Soos go home already?"

"Yeah," Stan grumbled, thumbing through bills with a small scowl still present on his weathered face. "Tried to camp out in the bathrooms again in order to stay longer."

Danny snorted in amusement. "Just be glad he's working for you for minimum wage."

At that moment, the twins stumbled in, looking worn out and covered in dust.

"What happened to you two?" Stan asked with mild surprise.

"Nothing," they chorused tiredly. Danny quirked an eyebrow. Did they encounter the rest of the gnome horde? Because that would explain their tired expressions and slumped positions. Also, Dipper seemed to have lost his hat, and they were both covered in dirt, leaves, and scuff marks.

Danny watched as Stan cracked a joke, but the pair hardly reacted. Mabel even looked a little upset.

"Uh, so, where's Norman?" Danny tried, ignoring the frown of realization that Stan shot him.

"Gone," Mabel sighed despondently. "I'm going to bed."

They watched the pair make their way to the "Employees Only!" door, when Stan abruptly cleared his throat.

"Hey, so, uh, wouldn't you know it, I accidentally overstocked on some supplies. You kids can go and pick something out, if you want," he suggested gruffly. Dipper and Mabel paused to stare at their great uncle in surprise. They were already used to his miser ways, and thus, seemed to find it a shock that their uncle was offering _anything_. They were fairly sure that, without Danny, they wouldn't even have food or necessities.

Dipper's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What's the catch?" he asked warily, and Stan harrumphed.

"The _catch_ is 'before I change my mind'," Stan snapped, finishing up the accounting for the night, and quickly, the twins scurried to pick something out.

"You're such a softie," Danny teased his old friend, and grunted in pain when Stan drove a fist into his chest. "Oof! Ow!"

"Shut up," Stan grumbled back, cheeks stained a slight pink.

Mabel zoomed around the store, looking for something to snag her attention, while Dipper immediately wandered over to the hats. He grabbed a blue and white hat with a pine tree logo, and fixed it on his head. Danny watched as the male twin adjusted it in the mirror, before nodding in satisfaction.

"Looks good on you," Danny complimented, and smiled at the grin that Dipper gave in reply.

Mabel dug through an old box, and grabbed something. "I'll have…" she spun around for dramatic effect, and brandished her new accessory. "A grappling hook!"

There was a pause as the three males eyed the weapon in her hands. Danny was pretty sure that used to be something of Stanford's before the portal sucked him in. "Uh, you sure you don't want, like, a doll or something?" Stan tried, but Mabel shook her head, eyes and smile gleaming.

"A _grappling hook_!" she insisted, and Stan gave up.

"Alright, fine," he sighed, and they watched as Mabel accidentally shot the hook through the roof and swung like a chimpanzee.

"I'll get the toolkit," Danny sighed in resignation, and left the room.

* * *

 **So, I hope you all enjoyed it! I will be differing a little from the main plot of the twins' adventures, because this is more from Danny and Stan's point of view, which means that their goals are a little different than what the twins are working towards. Dipper and Mabel are working towards discovering the mystery behind the book, while Danny and Stan already know the author; they're working on bringing him _back_. So, oftentimes, this story will have adventures with the twins, but other times Danny will go off on his own.**

 **Anyways, I will try to have the next chapter up soon, but honestly, now that Mass Effect Andromeda is out, there is absolutely no guarantee.**

 **Posted and Edited: 3/21/2017, 1:28 PM EST**


	17. Chapter 17

**Sorry, I meant to update last week, but it's honestly been a rough week. A professor I was good friends with passed away suddenly and unexpectedly, and I've been crying on and off this past week, so it's been _great_. **

**Anyway, thanks so much for your reviews. They were little bursts of happiness for me, especially at this time.**

* * *

 **Chapter 17**

Danny watched in amusement as the twins held up bottles of syrup.

"Syrup race!" Mabel bellowed, and as one, the twins held up their respective bottles over their tongues, watching the opening drip syrup eagerly. And slowly, the viscous liquid fell.

"Go Sir Syrup!" Mabel cheered, eyes fixed on the very slow droplet.

"C'mon, Mounty Man!" Dipper encouraged, but sighed and righted his bottle when his twin gave a screech of victory, a drop of syrup pooled on her tongue.

"Yes!" she yelled victoriously, before swallowing and choking on the drop of syrup. "I won!" she said, her voice mangled, before she continued to cough again. Dipper rolled his eyes and resumed looking at the catalog he had been browsing earlier.

Snickering, Danny passed a glass of water to the girl before he picked up his newspaper. He frowned at the picture on front – a "nemesis" of Stan's, Little Gideon, had moved back into town, it seemed. Stan wouldn't be pleased to hear that.

"Oh ho, no way! Mabel, check this out!" Dipper said eagerly, and held up the catalog.

Mabel let out a gasp of delight. "Human-sized hamster balls?! _I'm_ human-sized!"

"No, no, Mabel," Dipper tried again, and pointed at the article on the next page. "This! We see weirder stuff than that every day!" he explained, pointing at the picture.

Danny stood, still frowning at the newspaper in his hands. "I'll be right back," he muttered distractedly to the pair, not noticing the wary looks they threw at him. Stan needed to see the article about Gideon, before they got any nasty surprises from the child con artist. As he left, however, he heard Dipper say lowly, carefully, "You didn't get any pictures of those gnomes, did you?"

Danny met Stan in the hallway. "Hey, Stan, look at this," he murmured, passing the newspaper over and pointing at the article. He watched as Stan's face darkened. Their last run-in with Little Gideon had resulted in the child psychic screaming at them shrilly, his hair smoking, and threats to _ruin_ them if they'd ever crossed his path again. It was like dealing with a small, annoying gerbil. A _determined_ , small, annoying gerbil.

"Figures he'd be back," Stan muttered venomously. "You'd think that setting the brat's pompadour on fire would keep him away."

Danny chuckled at the memory. "Ah, well, at least we'll have the chance to do it again," he commented.

Stan cackled as they moved back towards the kitchen. "Well, the kids and I will be at the lake today," Stan informed the halfa. "Since it's the first day of fishing season, I thought it might be a good idea to take the kids as a fun activity sort of deal."

Danny nodded, and the pair stepped back into the kitchen.

"Morning, knuckleheads!" Stan greeted the twins cheerfully, rolling up the newspaper and waggling his eyebrows at them. "You two know what day it is?"

"Um, Happy – Anniversary?" Dipper tried, scrambling for the correct answer with a grin, and Mabel threw her arms up into the air.

"Mazel tov!" she exclaimed. Danny was one hundred percent sure she had no idea what that was.

"It's Family Fun day, genius!" Stan corrected, tossing the newspaper down onto the table, and Danny settled back into his seat, picking up his mug of coffee – wait, was that glitter in it? He shot Mabel a narrow-eyed, suspicious glance, and the girl smiled innocently (or rather, no-so-innocently) back at him. She must have poured it in while he was talking to Stan in the hallway.

With a smirk, he passed the coffee over to Stan, and barely hid a chuckle with badly-disguised coughing when the man drank it without question or hesitation. He didn't even seem to notice.

"We need to have more of those – bonding type deals," Stan finished explaining, setting the mug down with a hint of glitter on his chin, and Dipper frowned and adjusted his hat while Danny and Mabel choked back their laughter.

"Grunkle Stan," Dipper began warily, "is this somehow going to be like our _last_ bonding day?"

At the mention of that hapless event, Danny stopped laughing and _stared_ intently at Stan. The conman, remembering the incident, cringed and hastily waved his arms in reassurance. "No, no, nothing like that, don't worry!"

"Ugh," Mabel shivered, her eyes looking off into distant memory. "The county jail was _so_ _cold_."

"Alright," Stan conceded with another glance towards Danny, who smirked warningly in reply. "Maybe I haven't been the greatest summer caretaker. Heck, Danny's been a better one than me, and he isn't even here half the time."

The three of them looked towards the halfa, and with a lazy grin, Danny saluted and replied, "That's because I'm not losing my mind from old age, Stan."

"Shut it, Casper," Stan mock-scowled, before he moved to place hands on the twins' shoulders. "But I swear, today we're going to have some _real_ family fun. So, who wants to put on some blindfolds and get into my car?!"

"Yay!" the twins cheered, before Dipper's mind screeched to a halt at the mention of blindfolds.

"Wait, what?"

Danny snickered and rose to his feet. "Stan, I do have some business in town at the library, but I'll see if I can't join you later," he promised his friend, and waved to the twins. "Have fun!"

"Bye!" they called as he left.

Dipper watched Danny disappear down the hallway with a frown. "What does Danny even _do_ here?" he asked Stan. "I know you said he co-owns this place, but that isn't all he does, right?"

"He, uh," Stan fumbled for a reply. What could he say to Dipper other than, 'He's an immortal half-ghost that is looking for the journals so we can bring my long-lost twin home'? Finally, he settled on, "He's working on a graduate program through online courses, but he needs to research at the library."

"Oh, cool," Dipper commented, looking impressed. Stan breathed a sigh of relief, until- "What's he studying?"

"Uh, oh, hey, look, I found your blindfolds!" Stan distracted hastily, and Dipper yelped in complaint when the blindfold was suddenly wrapped around his face.

* * *

"Mr. Fenton, back again? It's like you can't get enough of me," giggled the librarian, Darlene, and Danny attempted to ignore the flirting with a slight blush.

"Just – just looking for a book," Danny replied with a swallow. He awkwardly scratched the back of his neck. And it was true – he _was_ looking for a book. A _journal_ , to be precise.

Darlene smirked at him and fluttered her eyelashes. "Well, if you need any _assistance_ , don't be a stranger, okay?"

"Y-yeah, sure," Danny muttered, and hurried away, his cheeks stained pink. No _way_ was he going to take that offer. He had enough on his plate to worry about than to even _contemplate_ the idea of dating someone nearly a century younger than him.

After searching through a stack of books for _any_ hint or clues of a journal (and ignoring that stupidly weird and creepy cult that lurked in the backrooms of the library), Danny gave up and looked at the clock. It read three forty-two, and Danny hummed under his breath.

"I bet Stan's still at the lake," he commented to himself, and after making sure that no one was around, he quickly transformed and sank through the floor.

* * *

"…My wife keeps missing me, but her aim is gettin' better!" he found Stan joking on his old boat, the _Stan 'o War_ , to a couple. When they didn't laugh, he repeated, arm-motions and all, "Her aim is gettin' better!"

When the couple still didn't laugh, he tacked on, "Y'see, it's funny, because marriage is terrible!"

And with a sniff, the couple rowed off, and Stan raised his hands up in confusion. "What?"

"Wow, _that_ was terrible," Danny commented with a laugh, appearing on the boat, and Stan jumped and whirled around. The boat rocked madly in his shock, but Danny just sat and grinned at the panicking conman.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, Casper," Stan grumbled sourly after he recovered from the near-heart attack, and Danny laughed at him, before grabbing a fishing line and expertly threading the line through some bait. "I thought you'd be at the library all day."

Danny groaned and flopped back into the boat, before tossing the line out into the water. "I've searched the entire library for a _hint_ of the other journals, and still no luck," he sighed. "I'm beginning to think we might have to take our chances and just test it out ourselves."

"You think so?" Stan grimaced. The pair of them didn't notice Soos, Dipper, and Mabel floating off in the distance in Soos's boat, nor did they notice the surprised, and then confused glance that Dipper threw them. "What if it explodes or something? Then it'd be nearly thirty years of work, wasted!"

Danny threw up his arms. "But that's also thirty years of searching with _no results_ ," Danny pointed out in exasperation and resignation. When Stan continued to eye him suspiciously, Danny sighed and relented. "Fine, we'll keep looking. But come wintertime, if we haven't found the journals, then I'm testing it out, okay?"

Stan's shoulders slumped, and he nodded in defeat.

"Hey, where are the twins?" Danny asked, and Stan's shoulders slumped even further.

" _Apparently,_ I'm not _cool_ enough for them," he said with a hurt grimace, before it was quickly replaced with a much more familiar emotion, annoyance and anger. However, Danny knew that it was simply a cover, to hide Stan's sensitivity. "They're off with Soos on his boat for a 'monster hunt' or whatever. They're trying to find some sort of lake monster."

Danny nodded sagely. "They won't have much luck, then, unless they're being particularly noisy – the monster in the lake is mostly nocturnal, and the lake is off-limits after dark."

Stan choked on his spit, and before he bellowed, "WHAT?!"

* * *

"When did Danny get here?" Dipper wondered aloud, frowning at the small boat in the middle of the lake, and watching their Grunkle Stan flail and yell at the black-haired young man. Even from here, it looked like Danny had purposefully riled the elder man up, judging from the distant, knowing smirk on his tanned face. "I don't remember seeing Grunkle Stan go to pick him up, either. It's like he just…appeared there."

"Maybe he swam!" Mabel exclaimed cheerfully, waving one of her disposable cameras around.

"Nah, dude doesn't look wet," Soos pointed out.

" _Maybe he teleported_!" Mabel gasped instead, and Dipper snorted at the ridiculousness of the statement.

"Don't be stupid, Mabel," he argued. "Grunkle Stan must've picked him up from the docks."

"But wouldn't he be wearing a life-vest?" Mabel pointed out. She gestured at the one around her shoulders. "The people at the dock made us put these on."

"He probably took it off," Dipper reasoned dismissively.

"Hey, did you little dudes hear something?" Soos asked after a moment, and suitably distracted, they turned their attention back to the monster hunt.

* * *

"Hey!" Stan hollered at a nearby boat. "Your fishing technique sucks!"

Danny tried not to laugh, his shoulders shaking from withheld giggles. "You're terrible," he told his longtime friend.

"Gotta have fun somehow," he shot back with a satisfied smirk, before a young voice interrupted them.

"Can you _pwease_ tell us more stories, Pop-pop?" They looked up to see a fishing boat near them, occupied with an elderly man and his grandchildren.

"Anything for my two fishing buddies!" the old man chortled, ruffling their hair, and the two young children giggled, before one of them fixed big doe eyes on their grandfather.

"Pop-pop? I just weawized that _I wov you_ ," he said, and Danny almost snorted at the sappiness of it all.

Stan, however, had other ideas. "Aw, c'mon! BOOO!" he bellowed, and Danny jolted, nearly upsetting the boat in his shock. "BOOO!"

"H-hey now, what's the big idea?" demanded the grandfather, standing up and planting his hands on his hips.

"Maybe it's because he has no one who wovs him, pop-pop," the little boy said, and Danny had to really _fight_ to hold back his laughter now.

"Yeah?!" Stan bellowed in outrage and hurt. "Well, I – I -!"

And just that moment, Soos's boat sped by, followed by what Danny could only describe as a _lake monster_.

"What the-?" he muttered, and as the lake monster sped by, a wall of water washed over them. " _Going ghost!"_

The light from his transformation was hidden by the large splash, and without a second thought, he turned both himself, Stan, and the boat intangible.

"What the _hell_ was that?!" Stan demanded after the water had settled again, and Danny released his hold on the intangibility. "Was that the lake monster?! I thought you said it was _nocturnal_!"

Danny's brow furrowed, and he slipped into the water, where no one will notice his white hair or abilities. "No," he muttered. "That wasn't the lake monster. And I checked, there's only one lake monster. It doesn't look anything like the original."

"Well, it's chasing after the kids!" Stan ordered sharply. "Help them out, Casper!"

Danny grinned and saluted, before he sank under the surface.

And with a powerful ripple, he sped after them.

Turns out, they didn't really need his help.

He followed them through a cave behind a waterfall, where the sea monster had gotten stuck. And after a few moments, they all realized that the monster wasn't real at all; just something that Old Man McGucket had created.

And with a shake of his head, Danny returned to Stan's side.

He transformed back underwater and climbed back into the boat, before he briefly used intangibility to dry himself off.

"So?" Stan demanded, and Danny grinned.

"They're fine, the monster was a robot that McGuckit made, and he broke it by crashing it into a cave," Danny replied easily, relaxing down into the boat. That was when he spotted the ankle bracelet around his friend's ankle. "So, uh, how did you get that _in the five minutes I was gone_?"

Stan grumbled sourly and shook said appendage. "The police thought that I was bothering too many people, so now I gotta wear this." He then waggled his eyebrows at Danny. "Unless my very best friend wants to help me out…"

Danny let out a resigned sigh, and after a moment of intangibility, the ankle bracelet was sitting at the bottom of the boat.

"Like I said before, the best friend an old man could have!" Stan chortled, slapping Danny on the back.

A call of, "Hey, over here!" and the whirr of a boat's engine dying caught their attention, and both Danny and Stan raised their eyebrows when they caught sight of Soos's boat, now thoroughly destroyed.

"You didn't say that Soos crashed his boat too," Stan muttered in an undertone, and Danny laughed.

"Ah, not quite," he snickered, and waved off the shocked and alarmed look on Stan's face. He wasn't about to tell Stan that the "lake monster" had destroyed it in the process of chasing the kids. The epic meltdown could wait until later, _after_ the kids had returned to bed.

Dipper held up a disposable camera as they reached Stan's side, and promptly snapped a shot of Danny and Stan.

"I thought you kids were too busy playing spin the bottle with Soos," Stan said to the twins, with just a hint of hurt to accompany the bitterness he felt towards the situation.

"Well, we spent all day trying to find a legendary dinosaur," Dipper began hesitantly, and Mabel quickly jumped in with, "But we realized that the only dinosaur we wanted to hang out with is right here!"

Danny began to roar with laughter, only interrupted by a yelp when Stan punched him, _hard_. The conman turned back to the kids with a defensive scowl.

"Save your sympathy!" Stan snapped back. "Me n' Danny have been having a great time without you!" He began to tick off various points on his fingers, saying, "Making friends, talking to my reflection, I even got a run in with the lake police!" He held up the ankle sensor, and the twins and Soos stared at it in surprise.

"H-how, um, how'd you get it off?" Dipper wondered, looking as if he regretted the question as soon as it slipped from his mouth.

Stan gave them a squinty-eyed, suspicious look. "Wouldn't _you_ like to know."

There was an awkward pause, before Dipper asked hesitantly, "So…I guess there isn't room in that boat for three more?"

Stan glared at the trio, still offended by their blow-off attitude before, but his expression soon melted when the kids donned a pair of ratty fishing hats. Danny's eyebrows nearly reached his hairline. The hats looked hand-stitched, which meant that Stan had looked forward to this day more than he let on, and that the kids blowing him off for Soos and a monster hunt really, _truly_ hurt Stan's feelings.

And now, Danny was extremely grateful that he had decided to join Stan, when Stan must've been feeling lonely and hurt.

No wonder Stan had snapped at that grandfather and his grandkids earlier.

But Stan's face slowly creased into a smile. "…You knuckleheads ever seen me thread a fishing hook with my eyes closed?" he offered, a figurative olive branch towards the kids, which they readily, eagerly, accepted.

"Five bucks says you can't do it!" Dipper challenged, hopping into Stan's boat, and Stan's smile widened.

"You're on!"

"Five more bucks say you can't do it with your eyes closed, plus me singing at the top of my _lungs_!" Mabel added, and Stan beamed. Danny, however, inwardly winced. He wasn't looking forward to that – Mabel had a particularly _loud_ voice, and he was certain that any singing/screaming on her part was sure to be earsplitting.

"I like those odds!" Stan decided, and reached for his fishing pole.

And just like that, everything was back to normal.

Danny tossed a lazy glance towards Soos. "Your shirt's missing," he pointed out dryly, and Soos laughed.

"Yeah, it got eaten by a crazy lake monster machine," the Spanish man said easily, stepping into their boat.

Dipper held up his camera. "Okay, everybody say 'fishing'!" he instructed, and began to snap pictures with a smile.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! I'll try and have the next update out soon! :)**

 **Posted and Edited: 4/2/2017, 9:45 PM EST**


	18. Chapter 18

**I'm back! And some of you have wondered why Danny has been kind of taking a backstage approach to all of this; it's because he's more of _Stan's_ friend than the twins', and therefore, more concerned about helping Stan out than assisting the twins in their little adventures. In addition to that, he's trying to keep his secrets away from the twins (and admittedly, they are a pair of nosy twins), which decreases the amount of interaction he has with them. But don't worry, in some cases, he will take a more direct approach with how he interacts with the twins. **

**Thanks so much for all of the reviews! They are always appreciated, and I really enjoy reading your opinions, ideas, and criticisms on how to make my story better.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

 **Chapter 18**

"Hey, Stan!" Danny called, springing lightly into the living room and absently flicking off the TV. "Stan! What'd you do with my car keys? Stan?"

"In here!" Stan called down the hall, and frowning, Danny followed the voice. Upon entering the hallway, he paused, and then scowled when he caught sight of an open door.

"I thought I locked this door for a reason," he complained, stepping in through the door and grimacing at the wax figures that surrounded him. He remembered his clone waking him occasionally to the sight of wax figures attempting to freeze in place and pretend that they _hadn't_ been moving all night. And, even as a ghost, Danny had considered that _creepy_.

"I think it's time to bring 'em back!" Stan proclaimed proudly, still dressed in his pajamas. Beside him, the twins were poking various statues and either making noises of wonder (Mabel), or rubbing away goosebumps (Dipper). In the corner, Soos was trying to right a figure that he had accidentally elbowed.

"Not a good idea," Danny argued, knocking on the nearest one (a life-sized figure of Genghis Khan), and quickly tried to think of an excuse other than "they're freaky and cursed." And then, upon spotting the one of Larry King, it came to him. "We don't have the rights for any of these, and if anyone finds out, then we're facing a lifetime of lawsuits."

However, to Danny's annoyance, the threat of lawsuits barely affected Stan. The twins watched with wide eyes as Stan waved the halfa off dismissively. "C'mon! What's the worst that can happen? We're out in the middle of nowhere, nobody'll find out!"

That was _not_ the issue. Danny tried not to growl at the potential threat. He remembered the last time he'd seen these – they had nearly stabbed Stan in their tomfoolery. And that was when Danny had hidden them away in a spare room, and blocked it off by locking the door, removing the doorknob, and placing wallpaper over it. The only reason why he hadn't destroyed them was for fear of an adverse effect from whatever curse had been laid upon them.

Danny fixed an icy, blue glare on the Genghis Khan figure, before he scowled. "Fine, if we do face any charges, you're the one in charge," he muttered, before he stalked out of the room.

"Where're you goin'?" Stan called after him.

The twins cringed at the answering bellow, "Out!" accompanied by the slamming of the front door.

* * *

Danny ended up spending the day at the library again, avoiding Darlene's attentions, ignoring that weird eye cult hidden in the back of the library, and still looking for any hints of the journals. When the library closed at five, he continued his search in the woods surrounding the town.

With still no luck, he returned to the Mystery Shack after the waxing moon was high in the sky.

And was (un)surprised to see a car with flashing red and blue lights parked in front of the house.

He groaned, slapped a hand to his face, and dragged it down. "What'd Stan do now?" he grumbled to himself, and stepped into the home.

"What's going on?" he demanded, approaching the town's unofficial sweetheart pair, Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland, and Durland startled with a shriek.

"AHHHHH!" he screamed, and both officers whipped out their tasers as they whirled around, but Danny simply held up his hands in a peaceful gesture.

"Sorry, didn't mean to scare," Danny said calmly, before he frowned. "Seriously, though, what's going on?"

"Danny, my man!" Suddenly, Stan was in his line of sight, and gnarled hands grasped at his shirt. "Wax Stan – he's been – he's been _murdered_!"

Danny gawked at Stan, before his expression morphed into something more akin to resignation and annoyance. "Seriously," he drawled flatly, prying Stan's hands from his shirt.

"More of a break-in, really," Sheriff Blubs replied, and immediately, Danny felt his hackles rising. Ignoring Stan's wails, he fixed his attention on the stouter, darker officer.

"Was anyone hurt?" he demanded, and Mabel sighed despondently. Danny watched as she placed her cheek and ear against the still chest of the beheaded wax Stan figure, in a morbid representation of listening for a heartbeat.

"Just my pride and joy," she murmured sadly, and Dipper grimaced in sympathy.

Danny sighed and shook his head. He knew who the real culprits were, but he had no chance of convincing the two officers who – or rather, what – they were. "Well, officers, thank you for coming by," Danny said, escorting the officers off the property and to their car. "If we learn of any new evidence on the break-in, we will let you know immediately."

"Oh, that'll be the day!" Sheriff Blubs hooted, jerking a thumb over in Dipper's direction, while Deputy Durland grinned toothily. "City boy back there thinks he can solve the case! We'll just leave it to him!"

"City booooy!" Durland echoed into the night sky.

Danny rolled his eyes, and opened his mouth to berate them (break-ins were serious matters!), but the crackle of the officers' radios interrupted him.

" _Attention all units, Steve is going to fit an entire cantaloupe in his mouth, I repeat, an entire cantaloupe in his mouth!"_

"Whoooeee!" Deputy Durlan whooped. "That's a 23-16!" and before Danny could stop them, they leapt into their car, giggling and chortling like a pair of schoolgirls.

Flabbergasted, all Danny could do was watch them drive away.

* * *

"I think this is _entirely_ unnecessary," Danny commented dryly, watching Stan huff and puff as he tried to lift a coffin out of the trunk of the car. The halfa was watching with half-parts amusement, half-parts annoyance, and was making no effort at all to help his longtime friend. Instead, he was lounging on the couch on the front porch, making faces at Stan and snickering at the older man's struggle.

"Your face is unnecessary," Stan retorted, and Danny mock-gasped, clutching at his heart with a pained expression.

"Oh, no! Your juvenile words! They wound me!" Danny exclaimed theatrically, and laughed when Stan flipped him off.

"Oh, hey, kids!" Stan called, noticing the twins walk by. "Give me a hand with this coffin, will ya? Since _somebody_ won't help!" Stan added, giving Danny the stink-eye through his glasses. Danny, in reply, gave a lazy wave. "I'm doing a memorial service for wax Stan," he said, turning his attention back to the twins and giving the pair a pained expression. "Something small, but classy."

"Sorry, Grunkle Stan, but we've got a big break in the case!" Dipper said with a determined fist pump.

"Break in the case!" Mabel echoed cheerfully.

"We're heading into town right now to interrogate the murderer," Dipper finished dramatically, and barely reacted when Mabel reached into his backpack to pull out a – _whoa, whoa, whoa,_ Danny thought, bolting upright. _Was that an axe?!_

"We have an axe!" Mabel unwittingly confirmed, before she began to wave it around with sound effects. "Rhee, rhee, rhee!"

"Hmm," and to Danny's shock, Stan _didn't seem all that worried!_ "Sounds like something a responsible parent wouldn't want you to do." He paused, before a broad grin stretched across his face. "Good thing I'm an uncle!" He posed dramatically, with one foot on the coffin, and bellowed, shaking a fist into the air, "AVENGE ME, KIDS!"

"Stan!" Danny protested, shocked as the kids wandered off without a care, and Stan snorted.

"Don't worry, Casper, they'll be fine," Stan said. "The most dangerous thing we have in this town is that biker gang, and they wouldn't harm a pair of kids. And they're smart enough to use the axe responsibly." He paused, thinking for a moment, then added, "I hope."

"Still, it's the principle of the matter," Danny grumbled, slumping into his seat. He was too old for their antics.

* * *

At dusk, Danny watched, partly amazed at the lengths Stan went for his "funeral." He had a fantastic eulogy and everything.

"Kids, Soos, Danny, lifeless wax figurines," he began to funeral organ music, courtesy of the iPod playing into a small set of speakers, "thank you all for coming."

Soos gave a great, honking snort into his tissue, and sobbed softly. Danny tried not to bust a gut at the proceedings. He was also fairly sure that his face was resembling a cross between constipation and hilarity – it _hurt_ from trying to hold his laughter back as much as he could.

"Some people might say it's wrong, to love a wax figure as much as himself," Stan said, and Danny suddenly had an uncontrollable "coughing" fit.

"They're wrong!" Soos shouted, leaping from his chair.

"Easy, Soos," Stan told the repairman, before he turned his attention to the wax figure in the coffin. "Wax Stan," he began, his voice beginning to crack, "I hope you're picking pockets in wax heaven!" Tears sprung up around brown eyes, and with a sob, Stan rushed from the room. "I'm sorry, I've got glitter in my eye!"

"Mr. Pines, wait!" And Soos was gone, chasing after the weeping man.

Danny shook his head, almost dumbfounded, and sat up.

"It's amazing that I've been friends with him for so long, and he still manages to take me by surprise," Danny commented idly, and the twins blinked at him in surprise.

"How long?" Mabel wondered, and Danny grinned, the smile creasing his tanned face.

"Longer than you've been alive, that's for sure," he retorted, and Dipper scoffed before he slumped into his chair. Danny elbowed him. "What's wrong?"

Dipper groaned in disappointment. "Those cops were right about me," he mumbled, and Mabel grinned at him, her braces glinting in the dim light.

"Dipper, don't listen to them! We've come so far!" she encouraged, and Danny nodded sagely.

"I'm actually surprised you managed to find the axe," he admitted, and Dipper hopped off his chair.

"But I considered _everything_!" Danny smiled nostalgically. Oh, to be truly young again, when anything beyond what you imagined just seemed _impossible_. "The clues, the weapon, the motive…" He trailed off in a sigh as he approached the "coffin," before his spine turned ramrod straight. "Wait, there's a hole in his shoe."

"All the wax figures have them," Mabel replied innocently. "It's where the foot-stand-thingy goes."

"Wait a minute," Dipper realized, and Danny stiffened when he saw _movement_ out of the corner of his eye, and dread shivered down his spine. _Oh no_. "What has holes in their shoes, and no fingerprints? Mabel, the murderers are -!"

Just then, the door to the room slammed shut, and Danny whirled around, slipping out of his chair to stand defensively before the twins.

"Standing right behind you," a posh, British voice finished, and the trio watched in shock as the wax figures all came alive.

"I _told_ Stan it was a bad idea," Danny muttered under his breath.

"Wax Sherlock Holmes! Wax Shakespeare! Wax…Coolio?" Dipper finished in a rush, even as his voice lilted upwards into a questioning tone when he looked at the last figure.

"'Sup, Holmes," the African-American figure replied.

Mabel let out a shriek as the axe was abruptly yanked out of her hands, but Danny easily and smoothly snatched it back from Wax Lizzie Bordon, before brandishing it threateningly at the advancing horde.

"Congratulations, my two amateur sleuths!" Holmes praised mockingly. "You've unburied the truth! And now _we're_ going to _bury you_."

"Not on my watch, Holmes," Danny snarled, and his eyes began to glow a threatening green. The wax figures stepped back, and from behind the halfa, unaware of the changes to Danny's eyes, Dipper wondered, "Why?"

"Why?" Holmes laughed deprecatingly, "It's because your Uncle and _he_ locked us in here!" A wax finger flung itself dramatically at the immortal teen.

"My dad, you mean," Danny snapped back, dread and anticipation curling in his gut, his frame tensing, and Holmes sneered.

"Oh, don't _pretend_ , you clod," he snapped back, but to Danny's relief, he made no further argument for Danny's immortality, and the twins only looked confused. Maybe they assumed Danny had done it when he was much younger.

Regardless, it appeared that wax Holmes had other things to focus on, such as their "tragic backstory." Wax Sherlock Holmes proceeded to wax poetic (pun intended) about how they used to have the time of their lives, before they were locked up and _forgotten_.

And Danny's temper _snapped_.

"It's because you nearly _stabbed_ Stan in your _fun_!" Danny snarled, his eyes flashing green as he stood protectively in front of the twins, fists clenched and body as taut as a wire. "I had no choice _but_ to lock you all up!" Dipper glanced at Danny in confusion and surprise.

"Danny, what -?" he began, but Danny waved a silencing hand, cutting the preteen off mid-word.

"Not now, Dipper," he snapped, his gaze still fixed on Wax Holmes.

Holmes just sneered at him in reply. "But you didn't destroy us, so now, we will take our revenge!"

And Danny, in that moment, decided that _sod it all_ , if he was going to be in a fight, he was going to _destroy them_.

"Yeah? Over me and my dead body!" he growled, and brandished the axe. He watched the figurines falter for a moment, a brief hesitation, before Genghis Khan seemed to gather his wits and charge with a roar and a wave of his swords. And immediately, Danny moved to intercept him.

"Get the fake candles!" Danny barked to the twins, using the axe to lop off wax Genghis Khan's arms. "Use them to melt the others!" He spun, and suddenly, wax Groucho Marx's torso was sliding off of his hips and towards the grounds with a witty one-liner.

"Whoa!" Mabel gasped in awe, watching as Danny turned into a one-man-army, a blur of fists, feet, and steel. "Danny, you're amazing!"

"Military training," Danny grunted, beheading Larry King, and Dipper's brow furrowed in confusion. Something didn't quite add up.

"But…you're a business owner? When did you go to military school? And when did you lock these wax figures up?" he asked, stabbing at wax Lizzie Bordon with his candle, and Danny threw a smirk over his shoulder while he sawed wax Robin Hood's bow in half.

"A _long_ time ago," he answered vaguely, before he spun and kicked wax Sherlock Holmes into the roaring fire.

Soon enough, the wax figures were all extinguished (but Danny couldn't recall if Mabel had thrown Larry King's head into the fire or not), and they were in the process of cleaning up when Stan returned.

"What the- what the heck happened in here?!" Stan demanded, eyes wide, and Mabel whirled around, wax coating her front and fingers.

"The wax figures came to life! We had to fight them off!" she cheered, and pointed enthusiastically at Danny. "Danny took most of 'em out, but I killed Shakespeare!" she finished in a happy rush.

There was a pause, before Dipper held up the head of wax Stan. "…Buuut we did find this!"

"My head!" Stan gasped in delight, before he yanked the twins into a hug. "You found my head!"

Danny thought absently that, if he didn't already know the entire situation regarding the wax head, he would have been very disturbed by that last statement. However, Dipper flushed and scratched the back of his neck at the gratitude their Grunkle displayed.

"It was nothing!" Dipper said bashfully, before they succumbed to Grunkle Stan's affectionate noogies.

However, his eyes caught Danny slipping from the room, and he frowned. The mystery around Danny seemed to grow, more and more, day by day. Military school? Friends with Stan since before the twins were born? That would have made him eight or nine, by Dipper's calculations. And Stan had mentioned, offhand, that he hadn't seen the wax figures in years, when the twins and Soos first discovered them. How old was Danny when they were first put away? Ten?

Wait…Dipper paused, as Danny's voice from the day before floated through his brain.

" _I thought I locked this door for a reason_ ," Danny had complained, when he first discovered them in the wax statue room.

And then, later, Wax-Sherlock Holmes had accused Danny of locking them in here, and Danny had answered, _"My father, you mean_."

" _Oh, don't_ pretend _, you clod_ ," Wax-Holmes had snapped back, and Dipper's eyes began to widen.

" _You almost_ stabbed _Stan in your fun! I had no choice_ but _to lock you all up_!"

Danny was lying…about his age? Or had Wax-Holmes simply mistaken Danny for his father? But if Danny's father had known Stan, why had Danny met Stan in Mexico? And would that have made Danny eight or so when he first met Stan? In a _prison_? And later, Danny claimed to have locked the wax figures up himself. How old was he when _that_ happened?

"Hey Dipper!" Mabel called from across the room, her braces glinting in the firelight and her cheeks flushed from victory. "Come help clean up!"

"Okay!" he called back, and he moved to pick up a dustpan.

And with his thoughts in turmoil, Dipper cleaned the room of melted wax.

* * *

 **Thank you, John Oliver, for having such a distinctive British voice, that it makes it easy to hear you in the back of my head while I'm writing Wax Sherlock Holmes's lines.**

 **And I hope you all are happy! We've got a suspicious Dip-dop on our hands now :)**


	19. Chapter 19

**So sorry for the late update! With finals, one of my siblings graduating, getting the flu _and_ pinkeye, it's been a bit of a rough time. Thankfully, my work shift for this afternoon got cancelled, so I had a bit of time to finish this up. **

**Thank you so much for the reviews everyone! We're over 300 REVIEWS. That is _insane._ I love you all so much!**

 **And as a final note, I won't be posting another update until FFnet gets their crap together, and fixes the updates situation. I haven't been getting any updates or alerts about any stories I'm following, so I doubt you all will either, so don't worry about missing chapters until updates are back up. Once they are, I'll post a small little note saying that the previous chapter is up so you all get notified, delete that after a while, and then upload the next chapter. Sound good? Good. :)**

 **Now, onwards!**

* * *

 **Chapter 19**

It'd been a few days since the Wax Figurine Incident, but Danny had noticed that Dipper had been staring suspiciously at him since.

"What'd you do to the kid, Casper, fill his shoes with slugs or something?" Stan grunted once he noticed Dipper's razor-sharp stare, and Danny shrugged, just as perplexed as the conman.

"I dunno," he replied, and together, they watched Dipper throw another suspicious glance over his shoulder at the halfa, before he closed the pantry door and slunk back into the living room with a bag of chips under his arm. From his spot at the kitchen table, Danny could hear the TV blaring something about " _Tigerfist!_ " and lowered his voice as soon as Dipper was out of earshot. "Maybe my clone did something?"

Stan's eyebrows raised. "Or do you think he knows something… _spooky_ about you?" he asked, taking a long sip out of his Pitt Cola. He was dressed in his suit and fez, having just finished a tour when he came across Dipper glancing at Danny with a narrow-eyed gaze. It sent pangs of nostalgia through Stan's heart at the sight; Stanford used to have such glances whenever he thought Stanley was up to something, at least before Stan got himself unceremoniously kicked out of the house.

Danny scoffed and rolled his eyes at the suggestion. "I doubt it," he drawled. "I've been careful, don't worry."

"Well, if they keep coming summer after summer, then they're going to notice. They're not morons," Stan warned, and Danny nodded thoughtfully.

"I suppose I can 'accept a job offer' sooner or later," he mused, and swiped Stan's cola for a quick sip, amidst protests from the aged conman. A lazy grin spread across his face. "Think they'd buy the idea of me leaving to work in Pitt Cola's headquarters?"

Stan chuckled. "Hey, as long as you're bringing in the dough, I could care less where you worked," he answered brightly, before Soos's voice interrupted the program blaring from the living room.

"Hey look! It's that commercial I was telling you guys about!" He and the twins quieted a moment to listen, and after a minute or two of mystical talking and music, one phrase pierced through Danny and Stan's contentment.

"… _Then you need to meet_ Gideon _,"_ the announcer's voice exclaimed, and both the halfa and the swindler sat upright in their seats, just as Dipper repeated the name in confusion.

"What makes him so special?" Mabel asked, and Danny could practically hear Stan's teeth grind the longer the commercial played.

As soon as it was over, Stan rose to his feet and stomped towards the living room.

"Wow!" Mabel said with breathless awe. "Now I'm getting all curiousy inside!"

"Well, don't get too curiousy!" Stan growled, pausing in the doorway of the living room and flicking up his eyepatch so he could frown sternly at the twins better. Danny shook his head in exasperation and trailed after the conman, and smiled a little when Dipper's gaze twitched towards him for two seconds before returning to his Grunkle's rant. "Ever since that little monster Gideon rolled into town, I've had _nothing_ but trouble!"

"He's _always_ nothing but trouble," Danny pointed out, and easily dodged Stan's half-hearted, grumpy swat.

"Well, is he really psychic?" Mabel asked, her eyes lighting up, and Danny realized that in that instant, the twins were lost to Stan's Anti-Gideon Cause. Even Soos looked eager.

"Why don't we go and see?" Dipper suggested with a raised eyebrow, and Stan swelled up with anger.

"Oh no," he snapped, not even phased by the twins' smiles. "Never! You're _forbidden_ from patronizing the competition! No one who lives under my roof, is allowed under Gideon's roof!"

And with a final huff, Stan stomped away.

"Do tents have roofs?" Dipper wondered, and sly grins spread across their faces.

"I think we just found our loophole!" Mabel declared, holding up a loop of string with a hole. "Literally! Wop waaa!"

"Seriously, though," Danny interrupted, and the trio before him startled, as if they had forgotten he was there, "I wouldn't put it past him to throw something at you guys, simply for being related to Stan. Last time the little brat was here, he tried to set fire to the Mystery Shack. Of course," Danny tacked on when the twins and Soos gawked at him, "we turned it around and set his pompadour on fire, so he pretty much deserved it."

"What?" Dipper spluttered, looking as if Danny had jammed a stick into the cogs of his brain, but the raven-haired teen smiled mysteriously, wiggled his fingers at the trio in a cheeky goodbye, and vanished down the hall without another word.

* * *

Like Danny had predicted, the twins and Soos left for "the local arcade" that night. For being such a professional liar, Stan bought the lie hook, line, and sinker, much to Danny's amusement.

However, Danny was less amused when he found out where Mabel had gone the next afternoon.

"She's _where_?" he demanded staring down Dipper with his ice-blue eyes, and the male twin began to sweat, despite desperately trying to keep his gaze on the mystery-thriller book in his hands.

"Gone to…hang out with Gideon?" he squeaked, and Danny's frown deepened, before he looked away. And suddenly, Dipper could breathe easier.

"That's what I thought you said," the halfa muttered. "Did she say what they were going to be doing?"

Dipper shook his head, and Danny scowled.

"What is that little monster up to now?" he muttered to himself as he wandered away, and Dipper watched him go with wide eyes.

And with a suspicious glance and a small shiver, Dipper returned to his book...before switching it out for a gold-bound, red journal with a six-fingered hand on the cover.

* * *

To Danny's worry and annoyance, Mabel's "activities" with Gideon progressed to a _date_ with Gideon. And to make it worse, Stan had discovered it in the daily newspaper and had gone to complain loudly at Bud Gleeful, Gideon's father.

Not like Danny thought that it would have much of an effect. The last time they had seen the fake child psychic, when the chubby boy was screaming at them, red-faced, huffing, and his hair an absolute _mess_ , the man seemed content to take orders from his son. In Danny's opinion, it wasn't Bud Gleeful that was calling the shots– it was Gideon himself.

So when Mabel returned from her date with Gideon with an upset expression on her face and a – was that a _live_ _lobster_? – Danny's worried feeling intensified.

Dipper, who was less adept at reading the atmosphere surrounding Mabel, asked casually, "Sooo…how was it?"

"I don't know," Mabel sighed despondently, tipping her lobster into the empty fish tank that Danny had been meaning to get rid of. "I have a lobster now."

"Well, at least it's over and you won't ever have to go out with him again, right?" Dipper asked cheerfully, but when Mabel didn't answer, and instead tapped on the glass of the tank, Danny groaned in realization, the sinking sensation in his gut now feeling like a lodestone.

"He asked you out again and you agreed, didn't you," Danny sighed. He'd seen this sort of situation before, back when Jazz had first started high school. Being an insensitive middle schooler at the time, Danny hadn't done much to help Jazz with her newfound, reluctant relationship, but he did recognize the signs that she hadn't quite wanted that relationship.

Plus, it helped that his parents were willing to pull all their ghostly inventions (and some not-so-ghostly, in the Fenton Bat's case) on her jerk of a boyfriend when the situation went sour.

And Jazz wondered why he had been so willing to go to their parents when she "dated" Johnny Thirteen.

"Mabel?" Dipper asked, frowning when Mabel didn't answer right away, and he repeated sternly, " _Mabel_?"

"BLARGH!" she suddenly exclaimed, whirling away from the tank with a panicked flail of her arms. "He asked me out again and I didn't know how to say no!"

"Like this, Mabel, NO," Dipper said disbelievingly, pointing at his own lips when he said the word, but Mabel was not impressed.

"It's not that easy, Dipper!" she cried, striding toward the table with another wave of her arms. "And I _do_ like Gideon! As a friend-slash-little sister!" At this, Danny bit back a snort. Oh man, if the situation hadn't been so worrying for Mabel, he would have laughed then and there. "I didn't want to hurt his feelings! I just have to get things back to where it used to be!" And with a huff, she seated herself at the kitchen table.

"Mabel, no, that's not going to work," Danny soothed, reaching over to ruffle her hair. "As a guy that's been on a few dates and that's actually had a girlfriend, I can tell you right now that he's definitely focused on winning you over, and unless you tell him straight, he's not going to get that you're not interested."

"But Danny, I can't just tell him no!" Mabel whined, twisting her fingers with distress, and Danny shook his head.

"Mabel, listen to me. You gotta say it to his face, or he's not going to take a hint. It'll break his heart, sure, but a little monster like him deserves it from time to time," he finished with a winning smile. And with that, Danny thought he nailed it.

However, it seemed as if his words had the opposite effect on the female twin.

"Ugh, you're just trying to get one over him with your stupid rivalry!" Mabel snapped, batting his hand away before sliding off her chair. "You're both not helping at all! I'll figure this out myself!"

And before either of the boys could say anything, she stomped away, her shoulders rigid.

"Well…" Dipper coughed, before nodding in defeat after his sister. "At least we tried."

"Yeah," Danny said, slouching into his seat. "We tried."

One would think that after being alive for more than a century, he would understand women better. But, of course, they were always willing to prove him wrong.

* * *

Mabel's troubles with Gideon didn't stop, and were even worsened by the apparent "deal" that Stan and Bud Gleeful had concocted. Something involving marriage and a lot of money, but Danny highly doubted that it would be a success.

However, Mabel was extremely grateful when Dipper had offered to turn Gideon down for her. And it seemed to Danny, after Dipper had cheerfully shut Gideon down, that everything seemed back to normal.

But there was an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, that wouldn't go away no matter what.

And it only seemed to intensify when Dipper got a suspicious phone call from Toby McGuire, from the _Gravity Falls Gossiper,_ to meet in a factory warehouse that was "coincidentally" owned by the Gleefuls about "anything unusual."

And with a frown, Danny shifted into ghost form, and followed the preteen to the warehouse.

Invisible, he easily followed Dipper through the doors, and wasn't surprised to see Gideon sitting in the lone chair at the end of the warehouse with a doll of himself in his hands, in a strange pantomime of an evil mastermind with a cat.

"Hello, Dipper Pines," the eleven-year-old hissed sibilantly, his free hand clutching his bolo tie.

* * *

"Well, well, well, what a _surprise_ ," Danny drawled mockingly, shifting back to his human self once Gideon revealed his powers and dropping his invisibility. Both boys jumped, _violently_ , and Dipper squawked loudly in surprise while they whirled around to face the halfa. "Of course, I found it very hard to believe you achieved your psychic abilities in the short year that you'd been gone, but really, you're up to cheap gimmicks now?"

"Y-you!" Gideon spluttered, dropping Dipper with his telekinesis and removing his hand from his bolo tie like it had been stung. "What're you doin' here, _Fenton_?"

Ah, it was _so_ refreshing to hear his name be spoken like it was the vilest curse by the little gremlin. He hoped that it would soon inspire fear into the brat's perfectly coiffed head as well. He flashed the preteen a smile that was all teeth and no sympathy. "Well, I heard that you'd been giving my business partner's grand-niece and nephew a hard time. So, naturally, I had to check it out."

"Yeah?" No eleven-year-old should sound that threatening, no matter how prim their southern-styled suits were, Danny decided, his shoulders still in their easy slouch and his hands in his pockets. "Ah'm sure that you've never seen the likes of _this_ before!" And with a snarl, Gideon flung a hand out while clutching the other around his green bolo tie.

A pale green formed around Danny for a split second, before Danny _pulsed_ , and it vanished.

Dipper and Gideon both gawped.

"W-wha –?" Again, Gideon tried to ensnare Danny, but the halfa simply yawned, and a small shockwave poured out of him before the wispy green light vanished.

And suddenly, Danny didn't look so relaxed. He looked _dangerous_.

Dipper found himself gulping, despite not being the center of Danny's attention, and Gideon? Gideon looked about to wet himself out of fear.

"Where did you find that tie?" Danny purred, striding up to the child psychic, who trembled under his gaze. "It seems _much_ too dangerous for the likes of _you_."

But Gideon, in the depths of his heart, seemed to stumble across a rare well of courage. He stiffened, and spat, "None of yer business, freak!"

And reached for his bolo tie.

"GIDEON!"

The three boys froze in the middle of the warehouse at the sound of Mabel's voice, and Gideon slowly turned to look at the warehouse entrance.

"M-Mabel, mah marshmallow," Gideon stammered, and Danny watched beads of sweat break out onto his plump forehead. "What're you doin' here?"

"Gideon, we have to talk," Mabel said sternly, marching up to stand before Gideon. She was taller than the little freak (not counting his stupid pompadour), Danny noted absently, and said freak fidgeted.

"'Bout what, mah dumplin'?" he tried to ask innocently in his southern twang.

"Gideon," Mabel said heavily, a look of disappointment and pity crossing her face. "None of this is Dipper's fault. He was only trying to help me. In truth, I should have told you myself."

"What're you tryin' ta say?" Gideon asked slowly, his eyes wide.

"Gideon, I don't want to date you," Mabel said slowly, and Danny watched with a surge of triumph at the upset glimmer in Gideon's beady eyes, as well as a wave of pride for Mabel. "I'm sorry, I should have told you sooner."

"B-but we can still be friends, righ'?" Gideon asked desperately.

There was a moment, before suddenly, Mabel's hand was wrapped around the bolo tie, and it was no longer around Gideon's pudgy neck.

"NO!" Mabel yelled at the child psychic. "You come here, threatening my brother and Danny?! What the heck's wrong with you?!"

"Mah bolo tie!" Gideon made a scramble for the tie, but Mabel had clearly planned ahead, and she tossed it easily to Dipper.

"Dipper, catch!"

It fell easily into Dipper's hands, and Dipper gave a cry of triumph. "Got it!"

With a roar, Gideon charged at Dipper, and to Danny's alarm, before he could stop the pair, Gideon crashed into Dipper, and flung them both out of the warehouse window. His breath catching in his chest, Danny realized that it threw them over the cliff's ledge. The bolo tie clattered against the stone floor, forgotten in the sudden attack, and Mabel screamed in terror.

"DIPPER!"

She made a mad dash towards the bolo tie, and screamed again when nothing seemed to happen. "IT'S NOT WORKING!"

Cold dread curled in Danny's gut.

"Try again!" Danny bellowed, blue eyes blazing, and he rushed through the warehouse door. "Maybe it'll work!"

But Mabel began to sob, with no reaction, and Danny knew that he had to act, fast.

He sprinted out of the warehouse and to the edge of the cliff. Easily, he spotted Dipper and Gideon – _they were still fighting, what on_ _ **earth**_ – and _shifted_.

"Going ghost!" he chanted, and a moment later Danny Phantom breathed in the night air.

He focused deep within himself, seized tendrils of thrumming, green ectoplasmic energy, and in his mind's eye, wrapped them around the two struggling boys. And, as an afterthought, wrapped it around Mabel and the bolo tie in her hands.

Immediately, the strain was tremendous. His body _screamed_ at him, protesting the abuse of his powers, but he couldn't let it go, not now. Faintly, he heard a small sob of relief from Mabel, especially when he gently floated the boys down to the forest floor below. A moment later, Mabel joined them, just as sweat began to pour down his brow. He sucked in a deep breath – _just a little further, and then he could drop them –_ and a scant second later, the tendrils fizzled out.

Gasping, the halfa slumped against the warehouse wall, his ectoplasmic heart thumping loudly against his chest. He'd never had to use his telekinesis ability on something so _heavy_ before – proof that Little Gideon wasn't so "little" anymore, and another point _against_ the monster's junk food consumption. And having both Mabel and Dipper levitated down didn't help much either.

Distantly, he heard a cry of rage from Gideon, and tried to collected himself. He needed to get down on there, needed to check on the twins.

And somehow, he managed to hurry down to the forest floor on wobbly legs, which turned out to be a bad idea because suddenly his arms were full of babbling twins and he couldn't support them on said wobbly legs.

His back collided harshly against the ground, but Mabel was crying with relief into his shirt and Dipper was talking at a rapid pace – a result of shock, maybe? And somehow, they were both _alive_ because _Mabel_ had somehow managed to get the bolo tie to _work_ –

A glint of shattered glass and twisted cord caught his eye, and soothing relief slowly trickled through him, followed by a wave of satisfaction. Not only was the bolo tie broken, but Danny's abilities were still under wraps.

Gently, he smiled, and wiped the sweat off his forehead before embracing the pair. "If you _ever_ scare me like this again, I'll tell your Grunkle, got it?" he threatened with a small smile, and received two half-laughs half-sobs against his chest.

* * *

 **Woo! Reemergence of Danny Phantom after a long hiatus! And thankfully, Danny's secret is still that, a secret. But for how long...?**

 **Also, I love Little Gideon's southern accent to bits. Having grown up in the South, it's kinda hilarious to hear it from a character that supposedly grew up in...Northwest USA? In Oregon? Because that makes so much sense? But either way, his voice actor _nails_ it. **

**Anyways, thanks for reading! Please leave a review!**

 **Posted and Edited: 5/10/2017, 4:00 PM EST**


	20. Chapter 20

**Sorry for the long wait! We've been having major internet issues at my place, and I haven't had enough time to camp out at a Starbucks for very long either. Not to mention that my working hours have increased dramatically since the summer started. Making bank, but also a lot less free time. So I apologize for the wait!**

 **Thanks so much for all the reviews! Over 300 favorites and 400 follows! THANK YOU SO MUCH!**

 **Now, onwards to adventure!**

* * *

 **Chapter 20**

"Hey, Mabel? Do you believe in ghosts?" Dipper asked. He was sitting behind the counter, a book in his lap.

Across the room, Danny, who had been taking a sip of Pitt Cola while taking inventory, accidentally inhaled, only for the burning carbonization of the soda to irritate his throat further. Dropping the can and his clipboard, he gagged and coughed, eyes watering, as Mabel, who had been sitting on top of a nearby globe, spun lazily in the room.

"I believe you're a big dork," she laughed, only to yelp in surprise when Dipper abruptly halted her spinning and sent her toppling. "Ow!"

"Hey, bro, you alright?" Soos called, pausing in his daily closing chores, and Danny waved him away, still coughing.

"Yeah, I'm fine, just went down the wrong pipe," Danny rasped, before sighing at his dropped soda.

"Hey, dude, catch," Wendy offered, and Danny easily caught the cleaning rag hurled with alarming force at his face.

"Thanks," he said, and knelt to clean up the mess. However, he kept his ears pricked towards the twins, in case there was further conversations about the supernatural. When the twins only began to bicker between themselves, Danny brushed it off as a random, simple conversation between siblings and finished mopping up his mess.

"Soos! Wendy!" The door flew open, and Stan leaned through the threshold, fixing narrowed eyes on the pair through his thick glasses.

Soos immediately leapt to attention. "Yes, Mr. Pines?"

"I'm headin' out. You two are going to watch the bathrooms, right?" Stan asked/ordered, and Soos threw him a salute.

"Yessir!"

Wendy also saluted. "Absolutely not."

Stan laughed, before fixing the pair with another suspicious glare. "You stay outta trouble," he ordered, and slammed the door.

The instant the door shut, Wendy strolled over to the far corner, where a curtain sat, and yanked it away. "Hey guys," she sang, "what's this? Secret ladder to the roof?"

Danny rolled his eyes. Wasn't so secret that Danny hadn't noticed her dragging it in early one morning, while Stan had been otherwise occupied. However, it was tucked away from prying customers, and it wasn't otherwise detrimental or anything to the gift shop's aesthetics, so Danny had allowed it. And Wendy _was_ responsible enough to be present in the gift shop whenever there was a tour, so it was no issue if she snuck away at odd times of the day.

"Uhh, I don't think we should go up there," Soos warned, wringing his hands and throwing an anxious look towards Danny. Danny, just at that moment, picked his clipboard again and resumed taking inventory.

"Ahh?" Wendy slowly extended her hand towards the ladder, and Soos began to panic.

"Ahh!" Danny and the twins watched as she retracted her hand, before slowly reaching for the ladder again.

"Ahh?"

"You're freaking me out, dude!"

"Can we actually go up there?" Dipper asked, and together, the twins turned puppy-dog gazes over to Danny, who sighed.

"Just be careful," he warned, fixing a stern gaze on the resident redhead, and the teenage girl nodded in agreement. She'd keep an eye on the twins, and was definitely fit enough to keep them out of trouble, or prevent them from falling.

"Roof time, roof time, roof time!" Wendy and the twins cheered, and began to climb up the ladder.

"Are you sure it's really okay for them to be up there?" Soos asked Danny after Wendy and the twins vanished to the roof, and Danny smiled.

"It's not a problem. However, it will be a problem if Stan comes back and the gift shop still isn't ready for closing," Danny said, and Soos leapt to attention.

"Yes sir, at once sir!"

* * *

"Random dance party for no reason!"

It was closing time again, and Danny grinned broadly as Mabel flicked on the stereo.

"Go, go, go, go!" Wendy cheered, and Danny enthusiastically joined the girls.

Back when he was a true teenager, before his ghost abilities, he was a terrible dancer. However, after years and years of being light on his feet, and dodging attacks, dancing became easier and easier, his footwork nimbler. The girls yelled happily as he spun to the beat and performed some tricky steps.

"Dipper!" Wendy called, and Danny glimpsed Dipper fumbling with his clipboard in surprise.

"Ah – uh, yeah?" Dipper stammered, and Danny paused and peered at the boy. Was he sweatier than usual?

"Aren't you going to get in on this?" Wendy asked, and the girls paused in their dancing to glance at Dipper eagerly.

"Oh! I, uh, I don't really dance," Dipper said hesitantly, his cheeks flushed and scratching the back of his neck.

"What? Yeah you do!" Mabel instantly countered, and Danny watched with amusement as Dipper gradually began to look more and more embarrassed. "Mom used to dress him up in a lamb costume and make him do the _Lamby Dance_."

"Mabel, now's not the time to talk about the Lamby Dance," Dipper said through gritted teeth, looking mortified beyond reason, and both Danny and Wendy laughed.

"A lamb costume?" Wendy asked incredulously, grinning down at Dipper, "Woah, is there like little ears, and a tail, or something?"

"Well, uh, um," Dipper stammered, and Mabel laughed, exclaiming, "Dipper would prance around, singing about grazing!"

Danny snorted when he saw Dipper making a 'mouth-zipping' motion with his hand at Mabel, and intervened on the boy's behalf, lest the male twin exploded from embarrassment.

"Wendy, isn't it about time for you to get off?" Danny asked, nodding at the nearby clock, and Wendy jolted in surprise before a broad grin crossed her face.

"Well, would you look at that! Quitting time!" she said happily, pulling her nametag off of her green plaid shirt. "The gang's waitin' for me."

"Hey, wait! Maybe I could – or, uh, _we_ could come with you!" Dipper exclaimed hopefully, scrambling after the taller girl, and Wendy paused, tapping her chin.

"Ooh, I don't know; my friends are _pretty_ intense," Wendy said carefully. She flashed Dipper a smile and brushed her red hair out of her freckled face. "How old did you guys say you are?"

"T-thirteen! Uh, technically a teen!" Dipper blurted frantically, and he relaxed when Wendy bought the obvious lie.

"Alright, I like your moxie, kid," Wendy drawled. "Lemme get my stuff."

As she left, Mabel turned to Dipper. "Since when are we thirteen? Is this a leap year?"

Danny chuckled. "Leap years means that the year is _longer_ , Mabel, not skip the year entirely," he corrected cheerfully. He turned a knowing gaze on Dipper, and watched the boy sweat. "So. Wendy, huh?"

"WHAT?!" Mabel screeched, bolting upright and scrambling over the counter to converge on her twin. "I KNEW IT! YOU LOVE HER! LOVE, LOVE, LOVE -!" she chanted, dancing around the boy, and looking increasingly sour, Dipper pointed over her shoulder.

"Hey, what's that, over there?"

"What?" As Mabel turned to look, Dipper flipped her long, thick, chestnut hair over her face, and the girl spluttered.

When Danny chuckled again, Dipper turned annoyed eyes up to the halfa. "What, are you going to make fun of me too?" he asked, sulkily, and Danny held his hands up in a surrendering gesture.

"Not until Stan finds out," he teased, and Dipper paled, before he turned to Mabel seriously.

"Grunkle Stan is _never_ finding out," he said seriously, and the female twin laughed, fixing her hair back into its proper place.

Sooner or later, the twins were gone with the redhead and her reckless friends, and Danny turned back to the gift shop, before he realized that the twins had left him with all the work. He sighed, and split into two. Blue eyes blinked back at him in confusion, and he gestured at the gift shop.

"Let's get to work," he told his clone. "Stan would have an early heart attack if he came back to this mess."

* * *

"Ugh, what a day," Stan sighed, sinking into the couch. He was dressed in his boxer shorts and his tank top, and a blanket was draped over his lap. Beside him, Danny sprawled out, his legs over his friend's lap and a bowl of popcorn resting on his stomach.

The halfa's blue eyes flickered worriedly towards Stan for a moment before switching back to the TV. "What happened?"

"One of the kids _licked_ one of the displays, and somehow had an allergic reaction," Stan grumbled tiredly. He dipped a hand into the bowl of popcorn and shoved the handful into his mouth. "And _of_ _course,_ his mom forgot the allergy shot in the car, so..."

Danny stretched out leisurely, and Stan grunted as the halfa's firm knee dug into his gut. "Sucks to be you," he said with no sympathy, taking a handful of popcorn as well, and he grunted when Stan's elbow landed heavily on his abdomen. "Ow."

"Deserved it," Stan muttered back.

" _You're watching the black-and-white period piece boring old movie channel_ ," the TV blared, and Stan sat up.

"Kids? I can't find the remote and I refuse to stand up!" he called, only to be greeted with silence and Danny's snickers.

"I don't think they're back yet," the halfa said, snatching another handful of popcorn. "And stop being lazy; go get the remote."

" _You_ get the remote!" Stan snapped, shoving Danny's legs, but they both paused when the TV introduced the next movie.

" _Stay tuned, for the Friday Night movie, "The Duchess Approves," starring Sturly Stembleburgiss as "The Duchess" and Grampton St. Rumpterfrabble as the rascal "Saunterblugget Hampterfuppinshire!"_

"DANNY!" Stan shrieked with growing terror, and Danny, feeling his mischievous streak kick in, remained firmly in place, trapping Stan on the couch with his legs. "DANNY MOVE!"

Romantic music began to play, and the caption, _"Gowns by Pepé_ ," flowed onto the screen.

"NO! NO! NOOOOOO!"

And wiggling, Danny settled further into the couch with a broad grin.

* * *

Throughout the movie, Danny could hear the clicking of his invisible clone's camera, and his grin remained firmly fixed on his face. Especially when he caught Stan with a handkerchief and tears running down his face. Both men were sitting upright now, and a tub of chocolate ice cream sat innocently in the conman's lap. Absently, Stan fumbled for it, and began to scoop the frozen treat into his mouth, his eyes glued on the screen.

" _I don't care about dukes or commoners, or his Royal Highness of Cornwall!"_ the female lead declared. _"I'm not afraid anymore, mother!"_

" _Duchess, I forbid you!"_

" _I may be a duchess, but I am also a_ woman!" The female lead cried, yanking off her hat to dramatic music, her hair flowing free.

"YES, YES! In your _face_ , Elizabeth!" Stan cheered, and Danny's ribs _ached_ with the effort of holding back his laughter. Stan reached up, and wiped his eyes, saying, just as Danny heard the phone ringing, "It's just like my life…in a way!"

"Just a sec," Danny choked out, his jaw hurting from the strain, and his eyes watering from an entirely different reason than Stan's. Snorting and giggling, he hurried over to the phone, picked up the receiver, and gasped, "Hello?"

" _Danny!_ " Dipper cried, relief lacing his tone, and promptly began to babble about seeing things, and how the gas station he, Mabel, Wendy, and Wendy's friends was probably haunted and Danny needed to come over to Dusk 2 Dawn _right now_ –

"Hold on, wait, you think it's ghosts?" Danny asked, his eyes wide and clenching the phone tightly. "Dipper, _what_ -?"

" _Just hurry! I have a bad feeling!_ "

Danny glanced over at Stan, who was completely engrossed in the old movie, and then back at the phone in his hand. He could practically hear Dipper's panic, hear how rattled the boy was, and sighed.

Well, this was it, Danny decided, bringing the phone up to his lips. Goodbye secrets. "I'll be there as soon as I can, Dipper," he said.

" _Thank you_ ," Dipper breathed, and hung up.

And casting one last glance at Stan, he sighed, and grabbed his keys on the way out, just as a small, innocuous glass orb on the bookshelf caught his eye…

* * *

 _What do we do?!_ Dipper thought, terrified. He huddled in the upside-down cabinet with Wendy, watching as an unearthly green glow swirled around Mabel. Watched as her _blank, blank eyes_ stared at both nothing and everything, the _unnatural_ way her body _twisted_ as objects flew through the air –

And then, everything came to a halt.

Jarred by the sudden lack of activity, Dipper's breath caught in his lungs, and he gasped for air, brown eyes zooming and darting around the green-lit room until –

His eyes landed on the entrance, where Danny stood, upside-down (or right-side up, Dipper corrected himself). His blue eyes were lit with the same unearthly light as the gas station, and an orb blazing with emerald fire in his hand.

"Never thought I'd encounter ghosts here," he said nonchalantly, and beside him, Dipper felt Wendy shiver. "You're the couple that died here back in the eighties, aren't you?"

Two figures materialized beside Mabel, and Dipper's eyes widened at the sight of the male ghost holding his twin by the hair. The grandfatherly-looking ghost dropped Mabel, and she grunted upon hitting the floor- ceiling. That was the ceiling.

"Oh, you're that charming young man, the one that accompanied that rascal Stan! How is he doing, by the way?" the elderly lady crooned, and Dipper's mind spun.

 _What_?

Dipper watched as Danny's eyes flickered towards the twins for a second, before flickering back to the ghosts. "I believe you're mistaken."

And Dipper found himself frowning. Danny _definitely_ knew something, and it wasn't the first time, either. Hadn't Wax Holmes said something similar, with Danny giving just about the same answer?

"No, no, honey, look, it's that young man that moved in with that science-y guy in the woods, remember? Stanford Pines?" The ghost-lady turned to her husband, and he grinned broadly at Danny, who was still covered in that unearthly green light, with the glowing green eyes.

"How have you been, son?" the other ghost asked cheerfully, and Dipper watched as Danny sighed in resignation.

"I'm really sorry; I'd love to stay and chat, but I have something I need to attend to." Danny nodded at Dipper, Wendy, and Mabel. "I came to fetch Stan's grandniece and grandnephew, as well as the kids with them, if that's okay."

" _NO_!" The elderly ghosts roared suddenly, and Dipper and Wendy both jumped at the sudden increase of volume. Mabel simply sat on the floor, still too disoriented by both her possession and the amount of sugar she inhaled earlier. And Danny? Danny didn't even _flinch_. "THESE TEENAGERS DISRESPECTED US, WITH THEIR NEWFANGLING INVENTIONS, AND THEIR ATTITUDES, AND –!"

"And you weren't teenagers once?" Danny interrupted sternly, pointedly. "Let them go. I'm sure they won't bother you again after the scare you've given them."

"Yeah, we're really sorry!" Wendy cried immediately, and the ghosts studied her, before turning their attention back to Danny.

"…Fine, they can go," the grandfatherly ghost muttered, and with a flick of his hand, the captured teenagers were suddenly on the floor, above Dipper's head.

And then, Dipper felt the force field holding them against the ceiling break.

Yelling and screaming, he, Wendy, and Mabel plummeted to the ground, but a soft green glow encompassed them before Dipper's face met the tiled linoleum floor. Breathing a sigh of relief, Dipper looked up, and gulped again.

Danny stood before them, his eyes still glowing that faint, eerie green. His hand was outstretched, holding a round orb, and gently, he set them against the ground. His hand flexed, and there was a brief pulse of power that fluttered through the room, and to Dipper's surprise, the orb in Danny's hand shattered.

And suddenly, Danny's eyes were bright blue again, but to Dipper, they suddenly looked much older, aged despite his young, tanned face. He sighed, looking almost nostalgic for a moment, before he turned to the teenagers sprawled out on the floor.

"Get up," he barked at the group on the floor. "We're leaving. And apologize to the owners on your way out."

To Dipper's utter amazement, the group staggered to their feet, stammered terrified apologies to the ghostly store owners, and stumbled over to the van waiting by the fence.

Danny shook his head in disbelief, and looked up at the floating pair. "Will this be enough for you to move on?"

The pair smiled. "Not quite. We just want a cute little dance to ease us up on our way."

Danny nodded thoughtfully. "I'll see if I can come back tomorrow with a MeTube video or something to show you. C'mon, Dipper, Wendy. Say goodbye to the nice couple."

Nonplussed and a little bit terrified at Danny's nonchalance towards the ghosts, Dipper swallowed and choked out a farewell, as did Wendy, who was looking very wan under her freckles. Without hesitation, Danny bent and picked up Mabel, slinging her over his shoulder, before he smiled once last time at the floating couple, and left with a small wave and a call.

"See you tomorrow!"

"Of course, dear! Take care of yourself! And tell Stan we said hello!" they called back, before fading out of view.

Dipper felt goosebumps rise all over his body, but he instead gulped and left as quickly as he could.

"Danny," he began, but the frozen glare Danny sent his way had his mouth clamping up with a squeak.

"Not now, Dipper," he snapped. He glanced at Wendy, and his glare softened just a bit when she winced. "Wendy, take your friends home. I'll be discussing this with you tomorrow during work. Understand?"

The redhead nodded. "Yes, sir. I'm very sorry, sir. I'll be there bright and early, sir." She shook her head. "Wow, I'm scarred for life. I'm going to have to go stare at a wall and rethink _everything_."

Danny sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. " _Go. Home_."

Immediately, Wendy nodded, gave the twins a small wave, and quickly retreated for the night, hopping into Thompson's van and easily driving off into the night.

Which left Dipper alone with Danny, essentially. Mabel wasn't quite in a proper state to count as conscious yet.

"We're going home," Danny said, his shoulders slumping, and he pointed at his car. "Get in. I'll speak to you two when we get back."

* * *

Danny wasn't quite surprised when he pulled up into the driveway, only to hear Stan yell, "You had your chance at the Catillion, you!" A pause. "That's what I _said_! AAAUGGGHHH!"

He also wasn't surprised when the TV crashed through the front window, narrowly missing the front hood of Danny's car. Stan, however, did look sheepishly at Danny and the twins through the broken window, and fumbled for the excuse that would seem believable. "I – uh, couldn't find the remote."

Danny massaged his forehead, an attempt to ease off some of the stress from the night. "Go to bed, Stan."

"Gotcha. Uh – did something happen?" he asked, looking at the twins' downtrodden looks and Danny's stern expression, and Danny rolled his eyes.

"Got themselves mixed up in some teenager stuff. I'll talk to 'em."

"Oh, uh, okay. Have fun, kids. Because Casper here can really rip you a new one if you're not careful –"

"Stan. Bed." Danny's eyes flashed green from behind the twins, and Stan gulped. " _Now_."

"Got it," Stan said with false cheer. "G'night, kids! Good luck!"

Quietly, the twins opened the door and trooped into the kitchen. Scowling, Danny followed them, and shut the door quietly. However, the twins both winced at the sound; to them, it sounded like a clap of thunder, a death knell.

"Sit," he ordered, and gingerly, Dipper sat. Mabel, on the other hand, let out a faint groan, and slumped into her chair, massaging her temple.

"Ugh…I feel awful," she complained.

"And you should," Danny countered sharply, still looking incredibly stern. "Ghost possession is no small business." He moved to the fridge, and rummaged around. "Here, drink this," he said, and shoved a bottle of Strengthade into the girl's hands. "You need electrolytes; it's more taxing on your body than you think."

As Mabel drank, Dipper mulled over this new information. "How – how do you know so much about ghosts?"

Danny grimaced, but his eyes remained a flinty, blue steel. "Not right now. First off, I want to know exactly _what_ triggered the ghosts. Normally, they would try to scare you before outright attacking. You were nearly past the point of attacking, and more to the point of killing. So what triggered them?"

Mabel shrugged, looking confused. "I don't know; I remember eating the Smile Dip…but it's like I had a massive…brain fart or something."

"I told you it was banned for a reason," Dipper muttered, and squirmed when Danny's sharp gaze fell onto him.

"Dipper? What happened?"

Dipper continued to fidget, and felt anxiety and pressure building up within him when Danny's gaze failed to waver. Finally, he couldn't take it any longer. "I'm sorry!"

"What did you do?" Danny's voice was calm, but it didn't make it any less cutting, any less dangerous.

"First off, I wanted to prove I wasn't a little kid," Dipper blurted, feeling sweaty and clammy all over. "They were making fun of me, and calling me Captain Buzzkill!"

" _What did you do_?"

And with that, Dipper swallowed, and recounted the entire incident. And when he reached the part where he lay down in the taped outlines of the bodies, Danny looked angry – no, he looked furious. And oddly enough, his eyes were glowing green again.

" _Of all the – do you know how – how -!"_ Danny couldn't seem to find the words to yell at him, which made Dipper feel all the worse. The young man's face was pale with anger, which made his newly-green eyes seem all the more striking. " _Of all the disrespectful -_!"

Dipper shrank in on himself as Mabel gawked, shocked at Danny's loss of composure. Normally, Danny was easygoing, calm, and a steady, reassuring presence. But this Danny was scary, threatening, and most of all…

Disappointed.

It churned in Dipper's gut, and he swallowed, and hung his head. "I know," he whispered.

"I don't think you realize _exactly_ how disrespectful you were," Danny growled, still glaring. "Think of it as someone defecating on your bed, and then using your clothes to wipe it up."

Both tweens winced at the image, and Dipper felt his throat clog up. "I – I had no idea…"

"Well, now you do," Danny snapped. "Ghosts are a big deal, no matter how many people dismiss it. It was entirely possible that those ghosts would have kidnapped you, to keep in the Ghost Zone until you'd died, or taken over your body like they did with Mabel. It's also possible that they would have attacked you, and killed you." The twins went gray, and for a long moment, they pondered this as Danny took the opportunity to reign in his temper.

"How do you know so much?" Mabel finally asked, once she saw Danny's eyes revert back to that sky blue they were so accustomed to. She still looked to be exhausted, and upset, but curiosity had overridden the other two emotions.

Danny sighed, and finally, took a seat with the twins. "My parents were ghost hunters. So I grew up knowing a lot about ghosts, whether I wanted to or not."

"Is that why your eyes glow when you're angry?" Dipper asked hesitatingly, still feeling like a lump existed in his chest, and Danny blinked in surprise.

"Oh, you saw that?" The twins nodded, and Danny sighed again, this time from resignation. "Yeah. Got sucked into one of their experiments on accident." He grimaced. "It wasn't fun."

"Is that why Gideon's bolo tie didn't work on you?" Dipper asked. "Because of that?"

 _Something like that_ , Danny thought to himself, and simply nodded.

"What about that orb you were holding tonight?" Dipper questioned, his eyes wide. "Was it some sort of magical artifact?"

"Sort of," Danny said with a minute shift in his seat. He glanced down at his hand and clenched it for a moment. "It had some ghostly residue, to an extent, but broke under the strain."

 _Heh, good one_ , Danny could hear Stan's voice inside his head, mocking and sarcastic. _That'll keep them from suspecting for a while_.

"Where'd you get it?" Dipper asked curiously, and Danny snorted.

"Found it," he answered honestly. Because, as he was rushing out of the house, he saw it sitting on a dusty shelf, and thought it would make a good prop, a tool that appeared to harness ghost powers. And hopefully, his secret would still be intact.

"But back to the original topic," he said quickly, hastily, before they got too suspicious, and he switched his gaze between the twins. "Look, I'm sorry for yelling, but you _must_ understand. Ghosts are dangerous, unless you know how to appease them, or fight them off. Both of which, neither of you know how to do. So no more haunted houses, no grocery stores, or any other haunted buildings. Are we clear?"

Together, the twins nodded despondently, and Danny smiled, before ruffling Mabel's hair and giving Dipper a light punch on the shoulder. "Get to bed, guys. I'll take care of the ghosts in the morning, and having a similar conversation with Wendy as well."

"Thanks, Danny," Dipper mumbled, as a wave of exhaustion swept over him. "For saving us."

"I promised Stan I'd help keep an eye on you guys," Danny said, a small smile appearing on his face, and suddenly, he looked ages younger again, his blue eyes bright and kind. It was such a stark contrast, Dipper couldn't help but stare for a moment. "I will do my best to keep that promise."

* * *

 **I love how Danny is doing his utmost best in trying to keep his secret but really it's just kind of sliding away from him...just like my dreams for the future haha...**

 **Ha no jk but for real it's only a matter of time, Danny, it's only a matter of time...! (Cackles evilly while staring dramatically into a sunset with waves crashing into the cliffside at my feet)**

 **Reviews are lovely and make my day! I do take your ideas and your comments pretty seriously, and know that your feedback is always very appreciated! Love you all lots! (Blows kisses)**

 **Posted: 6/16/2017, 8:32 PM EST**

 **Edited: 6/16/2017, 11:49 PM EST**


	21. Chapter 21

**I'm BACK! Super sorry about the ultra-long wait! This summer was filled with constant work shifts, saving money for college, then college starting, Dad having a heart attack, and now...APPLYING FOR GRADUATION WHOOOOOT! Super stoked. But now that I have a moment to myself, I decided to celebrate by sharing a new chapter with you! I have the following chapter already written (still needs a few edits, but other than that, ready to go!), and the next chapter posting will have a much shorter wait! Again, many apologies for that.**

 **Thank you so much to all those that reviewed last chapter! I was originally planning another interlude with Ford, but he was being difficult and didn't want to appear in this next chapter. So you get this nonsense instead.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

 **Chapter 21**

Several days after Danny had helped the elderly ghost couple move on, and a hilarious episode of Mabel, Wendy, and Soos trying to give Stan a makeover (which Danny eventually found himself regretting – Lazy Susan _wouldn't stop calling_ now), Danny found himself roped into setting up for a party at the Mystery Shack.

Or, rather, making sure everyone in town knew about it.

Which ended up being easier than he planned. He simply flew above town, dropping flyers along the way. He still couldn't help but laugh at the flyer – it held all of the needed information about the party, but at the bottom, was written, in big bold letters, "FREE?"

"Geez, Stan, you're unbelievable sometimes," he chortled, shaking his head in disbelief and hilarity over the flyer, and turned to head home.

He came back, just in time to see Dipper making cow eyes at Wendy. He took a moment to study Dipper. The kid had (mostly) been avoiding him since the ghost incident, still eyeing him in that squinty, shifty, suspicious manner of his. However, right now, he seemed to be more preoccupied with a certain redhead, and Danny took the opportunity to tease the boy.

"So, you gonna ask her to dance?" he asked the twelve-year-old, and immediately, the boy began to stammer and sweat.

"I-I can't just – I gotta -!" he spluttered, and raced off to his room with a terrible blush painting his face.

"Kid's got it bad, doesn't he?" Stan chortled from beside him, and Danny laughed.

"I was like that, back when I was in high school. You should have seen me with Paulina," he said with a wistful smile. "Sam would get so mad, because she knew that Paulina would only hurt me, and I was too much of an idiot to see that Sam loved me." He sighed, and his shoulders slumped. "If I'd known sooner, I could've spent much more time with her…"

Stan's eyebrows rose with concern. Over the years, he'd heard of Sam, Tucker, and Danny's family, and it was rare to see Danny hung up about them, but occasionally, Danny would fall into a rut. And it killed Stan to see Danny so…melancholy. And so, just like Danny had been there for him over the years, he was there for Danny.

"Hey, hey, hey, don't be like that," he consoled, nudging Danny with a gentle, friendly elbow before slinging his free arm over his best friend's shoulders. "Cheer up! We're having a party. And you'll see them again. I know it."

Danny sighed again, and leaned into Stan a little for comfort. "I hope so."

"That's the spirit," Stan said with forced cheer. "Now, how about we go and drain these little hellions of all their cash? It's your favorite thing to do!"

A small bark of laughter involuntarily escaped Danny. "No, Stan, that's _your_ favorite thing to do!"

"Yup! And I'm charging these kids an exit fee of fifteen dollars!" Stan crowed, leading Danny over to the food bar, and Danny snickered, his mood lifting.

"But what if they don't have enough? You gonna have them camping out at our place?"

Stan paused with realization. "Oh, right. Didn't think of that."

Danny laughed again, and grabbed a plate before piling them with snacks. "Well, I'm not taking care of them, if that's what you're asking," he said to Stan, and headed over to the DJ stand. He didn't notice Stan's look of triumph as he retreated, and instead struck up a conversation with Soos.

"You sure you don't need help with the sound booth?"

"Oh, yeah, dude, I got this! This place is about to get Funky Fresh, yo!"

There was an awkward pause as Danny tried to find a proper response. "…Right. Okay. Yeah. Funky Fresh, great."

And suddenly, Stan felt unsure about Soos behind the DJ stand.

* * *

Despite Danny and Stan's apprehension towards the success of the party, it started with a bang, and kept going from there. By the time the party was well underway, they already had a sizeable crowd of kids and teenagers dancing and hanging out.

Several times, Danny had gotten requests to dance, and blushing a little from flattery and embarrassment, he would turn them down. Instead, he contented himself with watching some of the crazy dancing, restocking the food bar, and occasionally teasing Stan about his bellbottom pants and open-collared shirt.

"Okay party dudes! Whoever party hardies – wait, what? – gets the party crown!" Soos cried into the microphone, Danny watched as a blonde girl sauntered up to the stage.

"Party crown? I'll take that, thank you," she said, gesturing impatiently and pulling out a compact mirror. Absently, she flicked it open, still gesturing for the crown, and Soos faltered.

"Uh, I can't just _give_ it to you, you have to win it," he said, a little nonplussed at the situation, and the girl laughed mockingly.

"Who's going to beat me to it? Fork girl? Lizard lady?" she asked deprecatingly, gesturing at a pair of girls standing beside Mabel, and laughed at the very idea.

Danny found himself scowling, and made to move to the stage, but a small, determined frown on Mabel's face had him pausing in his tracks. He watched with interest as she scampered up to the stage, and she popped up beside the blonde girl with a cheery smile.

"I'll compete!" she cried, and the blonde girl sneered.

"What, really?"

"Yeah!" Mabel exclaimed cheerfully, sticking out a hand. "I'm Mabel!"

"That sounds like a fat old lady's name," the blonde girl said with a roll of her eyes, blowing off Mabel's extended hand. But instead of rising to the bait, Mabel simply beamed cheerfully.

"I'll take that as a compliment!" she exclaimed happily.

The blonde scoffed, and Danny watched as she sauntered away from the stage, confidence and swagger in every step.

Mabel watched her leave, and Danny had the pleasure of seeing her bright smile suddenly consist of more teeth and a certain sharp element, promising humiliation and pain. "Haha, yeah, she's going down."

And grinning, Danny watched as Mabel promptly took command of the dance floor.

* * *

Halfway through the party, Danny suddenly felt insistent tapping on his shoulder. Glancing over, he frowned when he spotted nothing. However, his confusion was quickly replaced with understanding when he heard his clone say, "Gimme your phone – I need the camera!"

"What? Why?" Danny asked, frowning and moving to look as nonchalant as possible, as if he wasn't talking to an invisible clone of himself.

"The copier machine upstairs can clone people, and Dipper's clones are _hilarious_ , I gotta take a video!"

Danny paused. He did _not_ just hear that. "Wait, what?"

"Just give it! You'll have it back in an hour!"

And before Danny could stop, well, himself, an invisible hand dug into his pocket and yanked his phone out. "I'll be back!" his clone called over the music, and Danny shook his head with a sigh.

"It better be good," he muttered to himself.

A few minutes later, Dipper walked over to him, the number three written on his hat. Must be his third clone, Danny thought with amusement, and the clone looked just as nervous and awkward as the original.

"Hey, Danny, Grunkle Stan's messing up the food table," said the clone, pointing, and Danny turned to watch Stan dive around the table, trying to catch a…dollar bill on a fishhook? Danny snorted and giggled at the sight of watching his best friend flail around, and turned back to Dipper 3, who probably would've started sweating if he wasn't made from paper.

"I think he's got it." Danny had the distinct pleasure of watching "Dipper" scramble for an excuse, complete with arm flailing and stammering.

"B-b-but you gotta stop him!" And bemused, Danny straightened from his slouch against the wall.

He huffed theatrically. "Fine, I'll take care of it… _Dipper_." He made his way through the crowd, avoiding the occasional arm and leg, and easily snagged the bill floating in the air. "Stan, you're unbelievable," he said, handing it to the elder man, and Stan scowled.

"Hey, that bill was asking for it! I couldn't let it just get away!"

"Well, apparently, the printer upstairs can clone people, and according to _my_ clone, Dipper's clones are hilarious, so we'll be able to watch a video of that later tonight, if you're interested," Danny informed the conman, and Stan lit up with interest.

"Get the popcorn and the drinks, and we'll call it a party!" He paused, his eyes darting across the dance floor, and coughed. "Well, another party. We'll have to wait until everyone's in bed, though."

A mischievous grin spread across Danny's face. "Of course."

* * *

Later that evening, after Soos and Wendy had finished cleaning and headed home, and after Dipper, Mabel, and Mabel's new friends had retreated upstairs for the night, Danny held out a hand.

His phone dropped into it, and his clone faded into view, bright-eyed and red-cheeked from laughter.

"Seriously, you're going to love it," he said, and winked out of sight again.

He and Stan settled on the couch, and Danny scrolled through his phone to the video that his clone had recorded.

And soon, he and Stan were howling with laughter.

" _Guys, I can't breathe in here!"_

" _Yes, you can! There's some snacks and a coloring book as well!"_

"Oh man, I can't breathe," Danny gasped, bent nearly double, and beside him, Stan wasn't much better. He was busy wiping tears from his eyes, and he was leaning heavily against Danny's side.

"Comedy gold! We gotta save this, if only to humiliate the kid later!" he cried, laughing.

Danny collapsed into another fit of giggles, and Stan huffed and puffed, trying to catch his breath, before he cleared his throat. Danny looked up at him curiously, and Stan grinned.

"Pfft. _Tyrone_!"

And together, they dissolved back into laughter.

* * *

 **Sorry, little bit of a shorter chapter because I threw this together last minute. But still. This was one of my favorite episodes involving Dipper, including the one in the next chapter. Which you'll see within the next few weeks!**

 **Posted and Edited: 9/20/2017, 10:36 EST**


	22. Chapter 22

**So this chapter ended up taking much longer than I realized. And the reason why is because this chapter ended up being a doozy (I really, _really_ liked this episode, and also ended up watching it, like, three times, in addition to blitzing through the entire _Danny Phantom_ series again). It's actually split into two parts, so the second part of this chapter will be out...next week! To keep you guys on the edge of your seats, of course, and because I'm a terrible person who likes to keep people in suspense. **

**Thanks for the overwhelming amount of reviews for the last chapter! LIKE HOLY CRAP THIRTY REVIEWS I LOVE YOU ALL! And hey, if we manage to actually hit FIVE HUNDRED REVIEWS I'll write a little something special for you all!**

 **Now, onwards!**

* * *

 **Chapter 22**

 **(Little Dipper, Part I)**

This week had been pretty normal, for the most part. Dipper had gotten into a fight with a bully (and gotten _beat_ , bruises, scuff marks, black eye, "Like, Dipper didn't stand a chance against the dude," Soos had claimed) while Danny had gotten golden photos of Mabel forcing Stan to face his fears (which in turn ended up with the both of them terrified of heights, no matter what Stan claimed later). And of all things, Mabel had gotten new pet pig and the town fair, affectionately dubbed "Waddles."

"Look at this one!" Danny laughed, seated next to Stan on the couch with a pile of new photos in his lap, while _Ducktective_ blared from the TV. "You look like you're going to pee yourself, Stan!"

"Shut up, Casper, I'm trying to watch!" Stan complained gruffly, scowling at the TV like it had done him some personal harm. Beside him, sprawled out on the floor and the armrest of the couch, the twins muffled snickers and giggles.

" _This has gone too far, Ducktective!"_

" _Quack quack, quack quack quack!"_

The doorbell rang, and eager for a chance to get away from Danny, Stan leapt to his feet.

"Welcome to the Mystery Shack!" he exclaimed, throwing the door open with a grand gesture. "A world of wonder and mystery!"

"Stan Pines?" a deep voice droned ominously from the front porch, and they listened to Stan gasp.

"The tax collector! You've found me!" A second later, Stan bolted into the living room, roughly throwing Danny off the couch and onto the floor, while the twins scrambled out of the way. "Danny, _move_!"

"What the heck, Stan?!" Danny yelped, grunting when he slammed into the floor. Stan leapt onto the couch, grabbed the painting behind it, and seized a duffel bag packed with money. "Stan, there's no reason to run! I paid our taxes last April!"

"What?!" Stan paused, frowning at Danny with an appalled expression. "Why would you even do that?!"

"Because they're federal taxes! They're required by the law!" Danny snapped back, rising back to his feet while rubbing his backside. "What's gotten into you Stan?!"

"Stan Pines?" the voice from the front door asked, and they all looked over to see a man in a sharply-tailored suit, slick hair, and dapper shoes step into the living room. "I'm from the Winning House Lottery Saver's Contest." His stern tone dropped, and a large smile spread across the man's sharp features as he announced, like a game show host, "and _you_ are our biiiig WINNER!"

A pair of women dashed in with balloons, holding a large check between their hands, while a camera man scrambled in after them, throwing confetti at the floored group.

Stan's eyes narrowed as confetti fluttered down around him. "My one and only dream, which was to possess money, has come true!" he cried happily, a large grin spreading across his face, and the twins cheered.

"We're rich! I'm gonna buy a butler!"

"I'm gonna get a talking horse!"

Danny's eyes narrowed as he looked at the check. It looked official enough, save for one thing; the bank account number, from the company that supplied the check, was missing at the bottom of the paper.

And from the slight narrowing of Stan's eyes, the conman noticed it too. But Stan wasn't a good conman for nothing. His beaming smile barely wavered as he took a series of forms from the announcer, and proceeded to fill it with a signature that Danny was certain was twice as long as the man's actual name. Or rather, twice as long as his _twin's_ name.

Danny felt a slow grin cross his face. Oh, this was going to get _good_.

As soon as Stan's hand lifted from the paper, Little Gideon burst through the fake check with a triumphant laugh. "Hah!"

The twins gasped as Little Gideon crowed, "Stanford, you fool! You jus' signed over the rights t' the Mystery Shack t' widdle ole _me_!"

He burst into a little dance, his stubby legs working to balance his rather large frame. "Ha-cha-cha-cha!"

Stan, however, looked largely smug. "Uh, you might wanna take another look there."

Little Gideon lifted the form that Stan signed. "The Mystery Shack is hereby signed over t' –" His expression contorted into shock, then fury. "' _Suck a lemon little man'_?!"

Stan, Danny, and the twins burst out into laughter as Gideon ripped the papers in half. "How _dare_ you?! Ah am _not_ a threat t' be taken lightly!" There was a pause as he lifted his arms, and wiggled his fingers in the air, like a toddler asking to be picked up. After a moment, he glanced at the fake announcer standing beside him. "C'mere hun, ah need yer arms."

Once the announcer had picked him up in the air, he glared threateningly at the unimpressed quartet. "Ah'll get you, Stanford Pines, ah'll get you all!"

And with that, Little Gideon and his entourage left the Mystery Shack.

There was a beat as Danny, Stan, and the twins watched his departure, before Stan turned back to the rest. "Wanna see what else is on TV?"

"Ehh, yeah, sure, okay," Dipper decided, moving back to the couch.

"Sure thing," Danny drawled, settling back down in his previous spot, and Mabel climbed up onto his lap.

"I only really like the theme song."

* * *

"White Pawn, to E5!"

"Okay first off, not your color, and second off, stop stealing all the horses!" Dipper snapped from across the chess board at Mabel, pointing at all the knight pieces tucked inside her sweater pocket.

"But they like it better in here? Don't you babies?" Mabel crooned at them, before making neighing sounds and jostling them around.

Danny laughed from over by the vending machine, sipping on a can of Pitt Cola. He could see Dipper getting fed up, but thankfully, the game ended before Mabel could infuriate her twin any further.

"Aannnnd, checkmate!" Dipper cheered triumphantly, knocking over the black king and pulling out a notepad.

"What?" Mabel exclaimed, before her eyes narrowed, and she cupped her hands around her mouth. "Booo! Boooo!"

"Ohhhhh, Dipper wins again!" Dipper crowed, making a notch in a notepad, and Danny's eyebrows rose at the sight of two columns, marked Mabel and Dipper. Mabel's column was completely empty, while Dipper's was littered with tally marks. "Wooot!"

"Yo, Mabel, can you pass me that brain in the jar? The lady one?" Soos called from a corner of the store, and Dipper smirked, hopping off his seat with a victorious smile.

"I'll get it," he offered, but Soos shook his head.

"Thanks, but Mabel's taller," he replied, jarring Dipper to a halt, winning smile wiped off his face like a fly off the windshield.

"Wait, what? No she's not! We're the same height! We've always been!"

Soos peered suspiciously at the two of them before he clambered off his ladder. "Better check again, dude," he announced, before he ushered the twins to stand back to back. Danny pulled a tape measurer from his pocket, and lobbed it at the man, watching with interest as Soos carefully measured each one of them.

"Yup, she's got exactly one millimeter on you," he announced gravely, pointing at Dipper, and Dipper's jaw dropped in shock while Danny snorted into his drink.

" _What?!"_ Dipper exclaimed in shock.

"Whoaa, don't you see what's happening, Dipper?" Mabel breathed, awed. "This millimeter is only the beginning! I'm evolving into the superior sibling! Bigger! STRONGER!"

"Like some kind of alpha twin!" Soos eagerly supplied, and Mabel grinned broadly.

"Alpha twin! Alpha twin!" she cheered loudly, and Dipper scowled at his sister.

"Come on, guys, nobody even uses millimeters! That only makes you taller than me in Canada!" he tried to brush off, but Mabel had a mischievous grin forming across her face.

"You know Dipper, I always wanted a little brother. Who knew I already had one! Hahahaha! Yeah!"

At that moment, Stan wandered into the kitchen in his boxers and undershirt, rubbing his eyes from sleep. "I was awoken by the sound of mockery! Show me, where is the object of ridicule?" Stan demanded with a broad grin, looking oddly wide awake for someone that lived off of coffee and soda.

Danny laughed, and Mabel proclaimed, "I'm taller than Dipper!"

"By _one millimeter_ ," Dipper protested indignantly.

"Hey, hey, hey! Don't get _short_ with your sister!" Stan said, before guffawing loudly.

"Now, Grunkle Stan," Mabel said patronizingly, as Dipper scowled at their Grunkle. "I hope you don't think _little_ of him!"

"Haha, yeah, and – and – he's short!" Stan laughed, pointing at Dipper. Danny chuckled while Mabel cackled.

"Dude, maybe you guys should lay off of him a tiny bit," Soos suggested with an apologetic glance at Dipper, but unfortunately, his comment was taken the wrong way.

"TINY! Soos is in on it now!" Stan cheered, slapping the man hard on the back.

"U-uh, no, I didn't mean that!" Soos fumbled, stammering, and Danny grinned.

"It's okay, we just need a moment to appreciate the _little_ things," Danny offered, before breaking down into laughter with Stan and Mabel.

"Don't worry Soos!" Mabel chuckled after a moment. "He'll forget. He's got a...three…two…one-?!"

And leaning together, she and Stan bellowed, "SHORT-TERM MEMORY!" HAHAHAHA!"

"Pow! We are on _fire_!" Mabel cheered, before high-fiving Stan. With a yelp, Stan shook out his hand.

"Ow! Ooh, yeah, ah-!" He clutched his hand, and looked down at his grand-niece.

There was an awkward pause, before Mabel explained, "I high-five hard."

* * *

Two hours later, Danny pulled into the driveway, with groceries in hand. He heard Mabel yelling about wizards upstairs as he put them away, and humming, he shut the cabinets.

The doorbell rang, and after a moment, he heard Stan groan. "Ugh. _You_."

"Howdy, Stanford!" Little Gideon piped up, and frowning, Danny went to go investigate. Sure enough, Gideon stood in the doorway, with a baseball bat and a jar of angrily buzzing red bugs in hand.

"Gideon, you know, setting termites on our house is liable for house damage. We can sue you for that," Danny reminded, but Gideon sneered.

"Not Egyptian-cursed termites," the little menace hissed menacingly. "If ya don' give me the deed t' yer house, then ah'll smash this jar with a bat, and _then_ ah'll -!"

And before Gideon could finish, Stan smacked the jar out of his hand.

Buzzing angrily, the termites dove for the wooden baseball bat, causing Gideon to shriek like a little girl and scramble away from the shack, the jar rolling near his feet. Danny and Stan grinned at the little hellion's misfortune, and watched as he bellowed the usual threats.

"Mark mah words, Standford Pines, Danny Fenton! You'll pay fer this! You'll all pay fer this!"

And with another shriek, he scooped up the jar and dashed away from the house, batting at the termites buzzing furiously around his hair.

The two of them watched for a moment, appreciating the view, before Danny sighed and grinned at his longtime friend.

"I'm going to go lock up the car," Danny decided, and stepped back outside.

A second later, the twins burst out of the shack, yelling, and Danny glanced over in surprise. He watched as Mabel chased Dipper, before the two of them tripped and a flashlight tumbled out of their hands. A bright blue light burst out of the end, and suddenly, a _twenty-foot centipede_ burst into existence, crawled over his car, set the alarm off, and scrambled off into the woods.

Gaping, Danny slowly shut the car alarm off, and turned to look at the twins.

"Gaah!" Mabel shrieked, dropping the flashlight while staring at a hand that _definitely_ should have been the same size as her other hand, not several inches _larger_.

"No, no, no, it's okay!" Dipper soothed, taking the flashlight and flipping something on it before pointing it at Mabel's hand. Danny watched with surprise as it shrank, and Mabel breathed a sigh of relief.

Mabel blinked for a moment, before her eyes narrowed. "Normal hand karate _chop_!" she announced, before, basically, karate chopping the flashlight out of his hand.

Now, Danny knew from personal experience that things that shrank or grew other things was _not good_. His experience with the Fenton Crammer had taught him that much. So, incredibly worried, he rushed over to the twins, watching with horror as Mabel grew Dipper's head to triple the size of his body.

 _What if Dipper's neck snapped from the weight?!_

And second, _where did they even find such a thing?!_ Did they find it tucked away in the shack somewhere, leftover from when Stanford still lived here?!

They were back to normal size, correct body proportions and all, by the time Danny reached them, and quickly, he smacked the flashlight out of their hands.

"What were you two _thinking_?!" he thundered, glaring at the pair, and they gaped at him in shock. "Where did you even find such a thing, to use it so irresponsibly?!"

The twins quailed under his furious blue glare, but before Danny could berate them further, a new voice interrupted them.

"My, my, whut delightful manner of doohickery is this?"

They turned to see Little Gideon, scuffed up and flushed, peering at the end of the flashlight.

Mabel leaned in to Dipper and Danny's side.

"Maybe he didn't see us use it and doesn't know that it's a magic flashlight that can grow and shrink things?" she whispered.

Loudly.

All three males stared at her, and Danny smacked his forehead while Dipper demanded incredulously, "Really?"

Experimentally, Gideon flicked the light on and off, pursing his lips, before he turned a decidedly _evil_ glare on the trio.

"No, no, no!" they shouted, but before they could react, they were bathed in a bright pink light.

And no longer were they taller than Gideon, oh no. Now, Danny realized with a sinking heart, Gideon was the size of a giant, and they were the size of his hand as the little gremlin laughed like a maniac.

And before they could react, Gideon had scooped them into his former termite jar, and began to tote them home with a merry hum.

* * *

 **Aaannnd that's it for part one! Stay tuned for next week, for part two!**

 **And wish me luck! I should be studying for my Japanese writing and reading test tomorrow, but of course, procrastination got in the way so hopefully I'll be able to wing it with some last-minute studying and my life is a mess please help me**

 **Posted and Edited: 10/08/2017, 10:32 PM EST**


	23. Chapter 23

**Wow, such a huge response last chapter! Over twenty reviews! Seriously, I really am grateful for all y'all's support for this story. It really warms the darkened cockles of my black heart! :)**

 **Anyways, I know you lot are super eager for this chapter, so I'll let you go ahead and jump right into this 5,000 word masterpiece (haha who am I kidding?)**

 **Well, Onward to Victory! Forth Eorlingas!**

* * *

 **Chapter 23**

 **(Little Dipper Part II)**

Danny glared at the twins with folded arms, barely paying attention to the swaying motion of their carrier. They fidgeted and fiddled with their respective tops, neither one of them looking directly at Danny.

"Where did you find the flashlight?" he growled, drumming his fingers against the crook of his elbow, and the twins cringed.

"I, uh, made it," Dipper coughed, still avoiding Danny's gaze.

" _How_?" Danny stressed, still glaring, and Dipper gulped.

"I found a crystal in the woods that could grow and shrink things, and attached it to the flashlight," Dipper mumbled quickly.

Danny knew the place; he avoided the crystals at all costs, because he knew what would happen if he didn't.

He groaned and massaged his forehead, and looked over at the twins again. "You gotta think these things through, guys," he said, and just _knew_ his eyes were glowing when the twins glanced up and shivered. "What if one of you guys had been shrunk so much that we couldn't find you? Or stepped on you? What if, when you tripled the size of Dipper's head, his neck broke under the weight?"

By now, both twins were pale, and Danny felt terrible for doing this to them, but it was necessary. They _needed_ to know how much danger they had been in.

At this rate, they were going to give him gray hairs after a century of looking like he was eighteen.

* * *

Gideon brought them into his home, into his bedroom, where he then unceremoniously dropped them onto a desk.

Danny glanced around, and fought back a sneer. It looked like Gideon had taken his rivalry with the Mystery Shack to a whole new level: obsessive. There was a miniature Mystery Shack made of popsicle sticks on the corner of the desk, with miniature replicas of the four residents. Danny made a face, before turning his attention back to Gideon as the southerner growled, "You three are in a whole world o' trouble."

"W-what are you going to do to us?" Mabel stammered, staring up with a trace of fear, and Gideon Gleeful chuckled soothingly.

"Now Mabel, ah wouldn't hurt a hair on yer itty, bitty head!" he exclaimed, rubbing a gigantic finger against her head, and Mabel swatted him away. Then his expression darkened. "But only if you agree t' be mah queen."

"We live in a democracy!" Mabel shouted. "And never!"

Danny snorted. Couldn't have said it better himself.

Gideon snarled, and Danny tensed. "Maybe you'll change yer mind…after this!" And before the boys could react, the little conman seized Mabel by her sweatshirt, lifting her in the air.

"No, let me go!" Mabel shrieked, twisting and swinging with her arms. "Let me go, Gideon!" However, her protests were cut short when he dropped her in a gummy koala bag. She gasped in delight. "Gummy koalas!" And immediately fell onto the treats.

"An' as for you, _boys_ ," Gideon hissed, before spinning his desk light to shine it in their eyes. The two males jerked back, hands over their faces to block the light, and Gideon continued, interrogator style, "Where did you find such a device? Did you see it somewhere? Did you _read_ 'bout it somewhere?"

Danny frowned. _What…?_

Why would he place so much emphasis on 'read?' Unless...?

 _No. No way...!_

Dipper, however, waved at Gideon. "Lean closer and I'll tell you," he called, before mouthing at Danny, 'cover your ears.'

And tilting his head curiously, Danny complied, as Gideon leaned forward with a giggle. "Well, don' mind if ah do-!"

And without hesitation, Dipper leaned on the air horn beside them. An earsplitting blare tore through the room, causing the air around them to vibrate heavily, and Gideon shrieked with pain. Furiously, he batted aside the desk lamp, and roared, " _Ah could squash you like a bug righ' now_!" He lifted a fist in the air, and Dipper cringed back while Danny sank into a defensive pose, waiting for the blow to fall. If worst came to worst, he could phase himself and Dipper intangible, and they would be unharmed.

Only, the blow never came. They looked up to see Gideon tapping his fingers together, a demented little smile on his face.

"Steel yerself, Gideon. Oh, you can use them," he whispered to himself, and now, Danny was convinced that the little sycophant was off his rocker. "You can _use_ them."

* * *

The threatening phone call to Stan was both hilarious and disappointing. Stan thinking Danny's presence was gone, Danny could understand. It was confusing with his clone, and the fact that Danny did vanish for several hours at a time during the day (and sometimes night). The fact that Stan had seen the kids playing outside minutes ago (it had been nearly thirty minutes, with the bus trip and the brat's following antics) was disappointing and very worrisome in Danny's opinion. Stan needed to keep a better eye on the kids, without Danny having to interfere every hour or so.

Danny did laugh when Gideon threatened to send a text as proof, only to have Stan complain, loudly, " _Text me a photo? Man, you're not even speaking English!"_ And without further ado, hang up.

"B-but Ah – Hello? Hello?!" Gideon spluttered, offended, before he hurled the phone at the desk with rage.

It smashed all over the wooden surface, and casually, Danny avoided falling bits of plastic with the ease of a fighter with years of practice. Dipper, unfortunately, wasn't as lucky, and grunted with a large piece smacked against his arm.

Danny watched grimly as the little mutant cackled hysterically, a glint of madness in his beady little eyes. "Whut am ah doin'?" he asked himself, slapping himself on his forehead in realization. "Ah have _this_!"

He brandished Dipper's flashlight, and announced, "Ah'll shrink Stan and take the whole shack for myself!"

Dipper and Mabel gasped, and Danny grit his teeth. While thankfully, that plan wouldn't work (shrinking Danny and Stan wouldn't reveal the location of the deed, nor would it reveal the padlock combination that it was under), there were other worries to think about. If Gideon didn't get the shack, what would he do to Stan? What would become of Danny and the twins?

Gideon rose to his feet, and lumbered over to loom over the shrunken trio. "Ya'll be helpless t' stop me," Gideon gloated viciously, before picking up the small mannequins that he made of them all. "An' if you do… _smash_!" And with another evil cackle, he ripped the heads off the mannequins and threw them at the trio.

Grimacing, Dipper and Danny dodged out of the way while Mabel watched in horror from her sack of gummies. But before Gideon could burst into an entire fit of evil laughter, a voice interrupted from downstairs.

"Gideon!" Bud Gleeful called from below, "The ice cream truck is here!"

"Oh, comin'!" Gideon cheered, delighted, before he turned back to scowl at the three shrunken prisoners. Reaching down below, he placed a Guinea Pig on the dresser, and ordered, "Guard them, Cheekums," before he resumed his journey downstairs. "Ah'm comin'!"

The door slammed shut behind him, and the boys warily eyed the large Guinea Pig. Warily, Dipper seized a Q-tip, and prodded the large rodent in the stomach. When the creature failed to move, Dipper shrugged, tossed the Q-tip aside, and moved to the Gummy Koala bag.

"We gotta get out of here and save Stan!" he exclaimed, and Mabel rose to her feet, her face sticky from the Gummy Koala she was eating.

"I know!" She slotted the head of the Gummy Koala into her sweater pocket. "I'll be saving you for later!" She told the treat affectionately.

"Okay, how are we going to do this?" Dipper wondered, beginning to pace, and Danny pushed the bag over so Mabel could crawl out safely. "Gideon's got magic, and a zillion inches on us." He stopped his pacing for a moment when a streak of realization hit him. "On the bright side, at least we're the same height again," he told his twin with a smile.

A smile that quickly fell when Mabel hesitated. "Actually…"

"Is now really the time to be worried about this?" Danny asked, exasperated, and grim-faced, the twins nodded. They procured a ruler from Gideon's crafts, and annoyed, Danny measured them.

"Mabel is taller than Dipper," he informed them monotonously, fed up with their antics. And before either of them complained, his eyes flashed green. "Now's _really_ not the time, guys."

Dipper gulped. "You're right." He began searching for a way to get out of the bedroom while Mabel climbed onto Cheekums' back.

"Cheekums, to freedom!" She slapped its butt, and the Guinea Pig made no move. "To freedom!" she repeated, but when the Guinea Pig still failed to respond, she sighed happily and rubbed her face against its back. "Aww, you're just a big ol' dummy dumb."

Meanwhile, Danny was contemplating something. Something that could have large ramifications. He was reasonably sure he would be able to _fly_ the twins back to the Mystery Shack…but that would mean the reveal of his powers.

The real question was, should he? Or should he try to find another way?

But before he could open his mouth, Dipper called out, "Guys, I have a plan!"

* * *

Within moments, they were rappelling down the side of Gideon's dresser, and were watching the little hellion eat ice cream from the corner of the living room.

"Clean me!" the child psychic demanded as soon as he was finished, and dutifully, his father wiped his face clean with a napkin. "Father, do you think you could give widdle ole me a ride t' the Mystery Shack?" he asked, blinking big eyes at his father, and chuckling, Bud Gleeful pinched his son's cheek.

"Aw, shucks, son, ah would love t', but ah've got a heck of a lot of cars t' sell!" Bud cheerfully informed him, before his fingers began to tickle into Gideon's sides.

Gideon's laughter turned into a shriek of rage. "DON' TICKLE ME!" he screamed, red-faced. With a snarl, he tossed the ice cream aside towards his mother, and snarled at his father, "Whut did ah tell you – look at me – whut did ah tell you?!"

Bud Gleeful prodded his forefingers together in shame. "Ticklin' is no laughin' matter."

"There we go," Gideon said patronizingly, and Bud grimaced.

"Do you still need a ride t' the Mystery Shack?" he asked, and Gideon slid down from his chair.

"Ah'll just take the _bus_!" he snapped, tossing the end table aside on the last word. With an angry huff, he slammed the door behind him.

"What a piece of work," Danny muttered, before gesturing for the twins to follow him. Quickly, they made their way into the parking lot through the doggy door.

"We need to get higher," Dipper exclaimed, glancing around, and Mabel snorted.

"Yeah, especially you, because you're short," she teased, and Dipper shot her a scowl, before it morphed into a look of determination.

"Up there!" he pointed, and soon, they were scrambling up the sides of the floating dollar balloon. They watched Little Gideon board the bus, and with the help of Dipper's pocketknife, they were soon soaring back over to the Mystery Shack. Unbeknownst by the twins, Danny wasn't focusing on staying on the flying balloon, like they were; he was more focused on flying the damn thing, and steer it in the right direction. With a careful glance at Dipper and Mabel, he slid down the back of the balloon, shifted, and flew the balloon in the right direction. And once they reached the Mystery Shack's roof, he quickly changed back.

"There he is!" Dipper cried as soon his feet touched down on the Mystery Shack's roof. "What do we do nooowaaagh!" Danny glanced over, just in to see a woodpecker attempt to peck Dipper's hat. "Shoo, shoo!"

"I have an idea!" Mabel exclaimed, and dug the Gummy Koala head out of her pocket. And with careful aim, she dropped the treat. "I'm sorry Gummy Koala!" she cried as they watched it land in Gideon's hair, and solemnly, Dipper replied, "It's for the best," as they watched Gideon flail and attempt to fix his hair.

"What a vain little brat," Danny noted, then led the way down the drainpipe and onto the Mystery Shack's porch, where the flashlight lay after Gideon dropped it.

"Alright," he said, shoving the flashlight over so the button was beside him, and gestured for one of the twins to stand in front of it. "One of you get in front of it and I'll re-grow you."

"Okay," Dipper said, flipping the gem over before he paused. "Wait. You're gonna grow us back so that we're equal height, right?"

"Augh, Dipper, we don't have time for this!" Mabel yelled, stomping forward to shove her twin out of the way. "It doesn't matter right now!"

"Well, if it doesn't matter, then why doesn't he just do it?" Dipper snapped back.

"Why do you have to be such a weirdo all the time?!" Mabel demanded, shoving her twin out of the flashlight's range, and Danny snarled.

"Stop fighting!" both twins quieted, and Danny gestured angrily at the flashlight. "Will you two drop it and let me grow you back?!"

"I'm not the one that's calling someone else names all the time!" Dipper shouted furiously.

"Oh, like what, you're tired of me calling you Little –" Mabel began.

"Don't say it!" Dipper warned, interrupting her, but another voice drowned them all out entirely.

"Little Dipper."

And before any of them could react, large hands came and swept them all up. "Ah'd dare say ya'll woulda defeated me if it weren' for yer siblin' bickerin'!" Little Gideon laughed at them, dropping them all back into the jar, and Danny sent a seething glare over at the twins, who both looked sheepish again.

Gideon kicked the door open, and flipped the flashlight's gem over, and turned it on. "The Shack is mine, Stanford Pines!" he declared with fiendish delight, and the twins screamed, "No!" A bright beam of light struck out and hit the man wearing the Mystery Shack's official Fez Hat, and with a cry, he shrank.

Danny watched the hat fall on the floor with furrowed brows, covering the new miniature figure, but his frown wasn't worried. No, he was more confused than anything, because he was pretty sure he saw…

Soos gasped when Gideon lifted the hat, and scratched his head, befuddled by his new (tiny) development. "Alright. Something's _definitely_ different here."

Within seconds, Soos was dropped into the jaw with them, and Danny grunted when Gideon shook the jar, and Soos's heavy form landed on him.

"Tell me where Stanford Pines is!" Gideon spat at the jar, and Danny winced when streaks of moisture slid down the glass. From the looks on the twins' faces, they were thinking the very same thing.

"Never!" Soos declared, "You'll never find Stans…on the second door to the left, down the hall!" Then he paused, and asked himself, "Oh, wait, why did I say that?" Danny smacked himself in the forehead, and with another evil cackle, Gideon trotted down the hallway.

"Oh, Stanford, ah'm comin' for ya!" he cheered.

* * *

As Gideon strode down the hallway, the others knocked ineffectually on the glass, in an attempt to break it. After a moment, Soos sat down and buried his head into his knees.

"Ah, man, I really 'Soosed' that one up, didn't I?" he asked, depressed, and Dipper let out a sigh of defeat.

"It's not your fault, Soos," Dipper said, disappointed in himself as Mabel laid a hand on Soos's elbow. "I'm the guy that put together that shrinking device. I guess it's just…" he glanced at Mabel, and continued, "You kept teasing me Mabel, like, _all day_. What was that all about?"

And with a small, sad frown on her face, Mabel dug into her pocket, and passed a notebook over to Dipper. Dipper flipped it open, and Danny's eyebrows shot up when he saw that it was the notebook that Dipper recorded all of his wins in.

"I guess…it's just that…you're _better_ than me at like, _everything_ ," Mabel said softly. "And you always rub it in my face. Chess, checkers, ping pong…I guess I finally felt like I was _winning_ at something for once."

And Dipper's confusion grew into shame and disappointment in himself. "Oh. Ah, man, Mabel, I'm sorry. Now I feel like a big jerk."

"Don't you mean a _little_ jerk?" Mabel gently teased, and Dipper chuckled.

"Oh, man, you got me there." He held a fist out to Mabel. "We cool, Mabel?"

And Mabel grinned, wide and bright, before bumping her fist into Dipper's. "We cool."

"Are we cool?" Soos asked, and Mabel's metal grin grew brighter.

"We cool!"

"And as heartwarming as this is, we should probably find a way out of here," Danny suggested dryly. As happy as he was that the twins were making up, they needed to get out, stop Gideon, and put an end to this madness. To make matters worse, he could hear Stan cackling, and the little menace screaming out in frustration and fury.

Soon, Danny was balanced on Soos's shoulders, and with a grunt of exertion (and a little bit of ghostly powers), Danny had the lid off.

"Let's get that flashlight before Gideon gets Stan!" Dipper announced with determination, and pointed across Gideon's wide chest at his other pocket. "There it is!" he cried, gesturing at the bright red flashlight peeking out of the fabric, and soon, they were crawling up to Gideon's shoulder, so they could get across to Gideon's other side.

Mabel's eyes got wide when she caught sight of his hair. "Oooh, his hair's so shiny!"

"No! Don't look directly at it!" Dipper exclaimed with alarm, drawing his sister away.

While Dipper was busy with that, Soos launched himself into the fat rolls at the base of Gideon's neck. "This neck is really squishy! Hey, check it out, I'm making fat angels!"

"Ow, termites!" They all heard Gideon exclaim, and Danny looked up just in time to see Gideon's hand move towards the back of the brat's neck.

"Everybody, _move_!" he bellowed, and Dipper shoved Mabel to the other side of the southerner's neck, but Soos was stuck in his prone position. "Soos!"

And before Danny could react, Little Gideon swatted Soos off his neck.

A fall like that would kill him, Danny realized with a thrill of fear. At this height and size, Soos would die as soon as he hit the ground.

"SOOS!" the twins screamed.

Danny, however, _moved_.

* * *

The twins watched with awe and shock as Danny dove after his handyman, and Dipper thought, for one wild moment, that this was it, this was the end for Danny and Soos. But before either one of the twins could let out a shriek, two rings of brilliant light appeared around Danny's waist.

They slowly moved away from each other, one ring moving up towards his head and his outstretched arms, and the other moving towards his legs. And as they moved, the twins watched as Danny's clothes morphed from casual jeans and a t-shirt, to a sleek, black, hazmat suit. A glow started to emanate from Danny's form, his tennis shoes turned into boots, gloves appeared on his hands, and his hair – a shockingly brilliant white.

And open-mouthed, they watched this new, _changed_ Danny dive after Soos.

Soos gasped when a cold hand clamped down on his shoulder, and with a grunt, Danny pulled upwards. The twins gaped, and Danny breathed a sigh of relief when he had Soos safely within his grasp. And to the twin's continued shock, Danny managed to defy gravity.

"Ahhh! Huh?" Soos opened his eyes, to find himself floating above the ground. "What? Huh?" He looked up, and his eyes practically bugged out of his skull. " _Danny?!"_

Danny sighed, glancing down at Soos with bright, glowing green eyes, and heaved a sigh. "I guess that cat's out of the bag," he commented wryly, before gently floating down to set Soos down onto the carpet. "Look, I promise, I'll explain everything later in a moment –"

"Oh, hey, my corn chip!" Danny tried not to goggle as Soos turned away, distracted by something he noticed in the corner of his eye, and picked up a chip. "Thought you could get away from me, eh, corn chip?"

Trust Soos to not care about Danny's surprise super powers.

"Seriously?" Danny croaked out, before the sound of laughter caught his attention.

Ignoring Soos for a moment, he turned his attention over to where Gideon was rolling on the floor, laughing, and began to chuckle at the sight of Stan's deeply uncomfortable expression.

"I – uh, I don't even know how to react to this," Stan said to the giggling child psychic, and scratched at his graying hair. "Look, kid, I think this rivalry thing is getting to you. But what can I say, I'm a formidable foe!" Stan took a moment to preen, and Danny found himself laughing along with Gideon at his friend's antics. He watched Stan crouch down, and awkwardly comfort the hysterical child. "Hey now, come on, you'll get me one of these days. But hey, y'know, run your evil plan through some friends first, huh? Workshop it. But first, get your issues in order there."

And Danny hoped to every god in existence that his clone was filming this precious moment.

Stan rose to his feet, accompanied by Gideon's continued laughter, and still looking extremely awkward, began to roll Gideon towards the back door with his foot. "Hup, okay, over the carpet, there we go, around the end table, and out the back door…"

Gideon vanished down the steps as Stan stood in the doorway, and Danny heard the kid shriek, "Mah light!"

And without preamble, Stan replied, "You're the light of my life too, pal," and slammed the door shut.

And it was then that Danny began to laugh, _hard_.

He doubled over, floating in midair and laughing so hard he thought he might get sick. Despite everything that happened today, despite one of his biggest secrets coming out, he felt like this made it all worth it. Just – that _response_. What else was he supposed to do following that golden comment?

"Hey, dude! A little help?" Soos waved his arms, and flicking tears from his eyes, Danny floated back down over to his handyman.

"Think you can help me get the twins' attention? It looks like they've unshrunk themselves," Soos said, pointing. And sure enough, the twins were huge again, measuring themselves and exclaiming their surprise over their respective heights.

But to Danny and Soos's shock, Mabel took the jewel from the flashlight, and slammed it against the floor. "Die, die!" she exclaimed dramatically, smashing her foot against it and crushing it into even smaller pieces.

"HEY!" Danny bellowed from below, still floating beside Soos.

He could see the pair _freeze_ …before Mabel slowly lifted her foot. The twins looked down at the pair with wide eyes, and Soos called, "We've been trying to get your attention, dudes!"

"Glue," Dipper mumbled, horrified.

"Lots of glue," Mabel agreed.

* * *

After they were back to normal sizes, Danny could feel the twins' gazes scorching into him, and let out a heavy sigh. "If you want an explanation, you're going to have to wait a moment."

He tilted his head towards the hallway, and called, "Stan, can you come in here, please?"

"Is this about the mirrors?" Stan called back, and Danny could hear his heavy feet clomping down the hallway. "Because that little hellion Gideon broke them all, and I say we get Bud Gleeful to pay for them; we probably caught that little menace on camer –" Stan rounded the corner, and promptly choked.

Danny grimaced, still floating in place and glowing, with the twins bug-eyed and gaping. "Yeah. I'm going to need your help."

"Y-you know?! About this?!" Dipper exploded, his eyes darting from Stan and Danny and his brain connecting the dots. "W-what – what – what –?!"

It seemed like they finally broke Dipper.

Mabel, however, broke out of her stupor and began to prod Danny, who jerked away with a grunt. "Are you a fairy or something?"

"FAIRY?!" Stan guffawed, before dissolving into laughter. Unamused, Danny sent a small bolt of ectoplasm towards Stan, who yelped with it collided with his backside. "Ow!"

"What? No, his parents were ghost hunters, remember? Ghostly effect after an accident?" Dipper immediately countered, before his eyes fell on Danny again. "But you can do a lot more than just change your eye color, can't you?"

His tone was accusatory, and Danny grimaced. "Yeah. They built a portal and it blew up, with me inside. Somehow, I would up half-ghost. Half-alive, half-dead."

And with that explanation, he had the great experience of watching Dipper turn pale when he understood the implications. "You look like you've seen a ghost," he teased, before Stan smacked him on the back of his head.

"No ghost jokes allowed," the conman told him, and the twins watched in fascination.

Sullenly, Danny rubbed the back of his head. "It seemed a little appropriate at the time."

"I don't know how to react right now," Mabel commented, baffled, and Danny grinned.

"That's the spirit – OW!"

"Not allowed," Stan threatened, and Danny grimaced, rubbing his hip where Stan punched him.

"C'mon, Stan, what's the point of using my powers –" Danny began, just as his clone materialized beside him.

"-If I can't have a little fun with them?" his clone finished.

Dipper and Mabel's eyes bugged out while Soos gawked, and the next thing Danny and Stan knew, the twins were unconscious on the floor.

For a moment, Danny, his clone, Stan, and Soos stared at the preteens on the floor, before Stan commented, "Yeah, you broke them."

* * *

 **Geez, I had to rewrite this author's note like three times because the internet kept breaking on me.**

 **But anyways, only ONE of Danny's biggest secrets are out! How will Dipper and Mabel react now that they know about his ghostly half? :) You'll just have to wait until two weeks from now, where I'll (hopefully) have a new chapter ready and waiting!**

 **And Happy Early Birthday to Skitzykat101, if you still read my nonsense!**

 **Posted: 10/18/2017, 12:25 AM EST**

 **Edited: 11/6/2017, 12:19 PM EST**


	24. Chapter 24

**I know how a lot of you are dying to see Dipper and Mabel's reaction to Danny's abilities...but that'll have to wait! Have an interlude with Ford! Muahahaha**

 **(As always, thanks so much for your reviews and words of support!)**

* * *

 **Chapter 24**

The Fenton's home was, by far, the strangest home Ford had ever seen.

…Well, relative to his old dimension, at least. He'd seen much stranger in several other dimensions.

For the first two floors, it looked relatively normal; rectangular, bricked, and with cheerful, white-painted windows and doors. However, the odd metal… _contraption_ perched on the roof like an overgrown steel spider was unlike anything he had ever seen. In addition to that, there were the neon lights that marked the home as the Fenton's, their bright lights searing through the darkening sky as arrows flashed.

"C'mon," Sam, the dark-haired girl, muttered, opening the front door without further ado. While there was a new spring in her step, and a spark in her eye, Ford could still sense some lingering distrust towards him.

The other two, however, couldn't have been more excited. The redhead, Jazz, had yet to stop crying, and the boy, Tucker, was beaming from ear to ear. Occasionally, as they traveled (by _car!_ The last time Ford had traveled by car was 57 dimensions ago!), he would catch them glancing in his direction, smiling, and then glancing back at the road.

"Of all times Mom and Dad had to be gone for a convention," Jazz sighed, glancing around the house. It looked much more modern than what Ford could recall from his own dimension, but it was so blessedly _normal_ that he didn't quite care. With a content sigh, he sank down onto the couch that spanned the living room, watching as Jazz pulled out a…walkie-talkie? No, it was a phone, Ford realized, studying the device. Small, sleek, and activated by touch…technology here was more advanced than he realized.

He watched as she pulled up a program that dialed a number and held it up to her ear. After a moment, she scowled, and hung up, sliding the phone into her pocket.

"Can keep a machete, ten guns, and a staff on her, but doesn't have space for a cell phone…" the redhead grumbled to herself. With long-legged grace, she moved to sit near Ford. A few spaces down, closest to the coffee table, Tucker had set up shop, so to speak, with another sleek object that resembled a thin computer and several other little devices.

Sam, however, pulled up a chair, and plopped herself down across from Ford, her gun still strapped to her hip and a slight scowl on her face.

"Okay, talk," she said with an impatient tap of her foot. "You mentioned knowing Danny back in the seventies. Care to explain?"

Ford's eyebrows raised, before he nodded and licked his lips. These people knew of other dimensions and alternate realities. It wouldn't be too far-fetched to think that they could help him find a way back home, especially if Danny still lived there.

"Let me start at the beginning," he said slowly. "Back when I was twenty-six, I started my research into the paranormal, which led my research to a town in Oregon, called Gravity Falls…"

He detailed his research, his studies, and his subsequent meeting with Bill. He noticed, the more he talked about the demon, how all three of them sat up with growing frowns on their faces, while Tucker's fingers flew across the keyboard. He saw the dark-skinned teen's eyebrows shoot up towards his beanie, but he refrained from interrupting Ford's tale. Instead, he lifted his hands from the keyboard, and leaned forward to continue listening to Ford's story.

Sam's thunderous expression didn't help, either. To Ford's utmost surprise, she seemed to have recognized some aspects of Bill, in any case, and her fingers clenched the longer Ford spoke.

"And then, one day, while I was at my wit's end, thinking Bill was going to come and possess me, and _use_ me to take over the world, I had the inspiration to write to my twin brother. A twin brother I hadn't seen in ten years. I thought, if there was anyone I could trust, it would be him." Ford grimaced, and shook his head. "He showed up at my door on December 12th, and your friend, Danny was with him."

"How did he look?" Jazz interrupted, the first time since Ford had begun. "Did he look healthy? Was he injured in any way? Did he look too skinny or -?"

"Jazz," Sam cut in, violet eyes flashing with amusement, but Ford could see how she had tensed at the mention of her friend. "Let him finish."

Ford inclined his head at Jazz. "He looked fine, to me. As far as I noticed in my state, and in my brief meeting with him, he looked healthy, confident. Stan introduced him to me as his friend, and after I determined that they were not possessed, I invited them into my house." He grimaced. "Only, I didn't think that my wards against demons would affect him, too."

"Wards?" Jazz and Tucker asked, curious and worried, and Ford shook his head.

"I placed wards around my house, and as soon as Danny stepped in through the door, he collapsed. I thought he was possessed by something, because that was the only reason _why_ he would collapse after passing through my wards, but he still seemed fine afterwards, if shaken. Stan admitted that he wasn't possessed by anything, but Danny was the one that told me he had ghost powers, powers that he couldn't access anymore, thanks to the wards."

"That's when you found out he was half-ghost," Jazz realized.

"What were the wards made of?" Sam asked, eyes narrowing and her mouth curling in distaste, and Ford hummed as he wracked his mind.

"Steel, salt, and dried flores sanguines, around the edges of my house," he said slowly, and Sam's eyes widened.

"Flores San – _Blood Blossoms_?!" she hissed, half-rising out of her chair, and Jazz and Tucker both gasped, before whirling around to stare at Ford.

Ford scowled back at Sam, his spine straightening under the glare that the Goth sent him. "I had no knowledge of his abilities, and he was uninvited to my house. I was paranoid, desperate, and Danny was _exactly_ the kind of creature that I was trying to repel from my home!" he snapped unapologetically.

"He's not a creature, he's a human being!" Sam snarled back, and Jazz quickly raised her hands.

"Sam, calm down, he didn't know," she soothed the fuming dark-haired teen. "He was well within his rights to ward his home accordingly, even if Blood Blossoms are harmful to Danny." Her expression turned thoughtful. "Though I've never heard of dried Blood Blossoms having any effect on him, or shorting out his powers. I know fresh ones do…Maybe those in combination with the salt and iron had a greater effect than I thought." Jazz paused, and shook her head. "Something to consider once we get him back, I guess."

Tucker grimaced and clutched at his stomach. "As long as I don't have to eat them again."

Ford listened to the conversation, a little baffled, but cleared his throat and continued with his tale. "After it was determined that Danny was fine, and that he was truly part-ghost, and of no relation to Bill, I took them down to my lab. I tried to get Stan to take my research, hide it, and never speak of it again, but he got angry. Accused that I had it easy, despite the fact he lost me my dream school and the opportunity of a lifetime, and that he would just _destroy_ my research -!" Even now, the thought of it infuriated him. He took a couple of deep breaths, and unclenched his fists. "We fought. Danny got injured, somehow, in the scuffle, and Stan –" Ford swallowed. This, this was something that Ford would regret for the rest of his life. "-I burned Stan, badly. And in the fight, the portal somehow turned on, and I got caught up in the gravitational pull of the activated portal. And ever since then, I've been dimension hopping, trying to get home."

Jazz, Tucker, and Sam were silent by the time Ford finished.

"Danny…how badly injured was he?" Sam slowly asked, her intense gaze fixed on Ford, and Ford gulped.

"Not too badly, I think. He punched me for hurting Stan so badly, before I was pulled through the portal."

The three young adults relaxed at that, and Jazz tilted her head back and forth, sorting through the information she received from Ford.

"You're certain that you're in a separate dimension compared to your old one? It's possible that you're in your original dimension, just several years in the future," she pointed out, and Ford jolted. The thought had never occurred to him, but before he could open his mouth, Tucker shook his head.

"Nah, I already looked up his name and appearance. He's not listed in any government database, and there's no record of him being born in New Jersey in the sixties."

And just like that, any feeling of hope Ford experienced was gone.

"But your twin…" Jazz began, still looking thoughtful, "is he a fraternal twin? Or Identical?"

"Identical," Ford answered, confused, but the others seemed to have perked up.

"Then that means we can lock onto his DNA signature, since it's identical to yours!" Tucker exclaimed. "We already have a sample of Danny's unique DNA, and since they're in the same dimension, then that means there's a chance we can open a portal between our dimension and theirs!"

"We'll have to get mom and dad back home," Jazz was saying rapidly, her voice nearly lost to the cacophony of voices washing over Ford. "Despite Dad's behavior, he and mom are quite good and creating new inventions, and they would have a better idea on how to create a working, _stable_ portal between our dimension and theirs. Besides, it was their invention that sent Danny into a different dimension as well, and it's not the first time we've been sucked into a random portal."

"We'll be able to get him back home!" Sam exclaimed, a smile beginning to pull at black lipstick-stained lips.

After that, most of what they said was lost to a dull roar in Ford's ears. They would able to help him get back. They would be able to open a dimensional portal to his original dimension.

Soon, he would be _home_.

Hope blossomed in his chest, so much that it almost _hurt_. Belatedly, he noticed that Jazz was speaking to him, a wide smile on her face and her electric blue eyes dancing, and he smiled weakly, shakily at her, but he could barely hear what she was saying. All he could hear was the thump of his heart, and the rushing of blood in his veins as the entire _world_ roared and spun around him.

"…Ford?" Jazz's voice finally broke through, and Ford blinked, before shaking his head.

"…My apologies," he said, and his voice cracked. His throat felt uncommonly tight, and he sucked in a deep, ragged breath. "I lost hope a long time ago that I would ever return home."

Jazz's bright smile turned more sympathetic, gentler. "Why don't I show you to the guest room. I'll try to get in contact with my parents again – they're in London for a Ghost Hunter's conference – and as soon as they get back, we'll be able to get started."

Numbly, Ford nodded and rose to his feet. Sam and Tucker smiled at him as he moved to leave, and Jazz led him up the stairs and down a hall.

Jazz sent him another smile. "If you need anything, just let me know, okay?" she offered kindly, and Ford blinked rapidly, trying to prevent an onset of tears that were threatening to fall.

"Jazz…If this works, I won't be able to thank you enough," he said softly, and Jazz beamed, her own eyes looking shiny and wet.

"Please, Dr. Pines…if it weren't for you, we wouldn't have a chance of bringing Danny home. It's you who we should be thanking," she murmured. She reached for the door. "I'll leave you to rest."

And after the door shut behind her, Ford sank onto the bed as tears, long since repressed, finally made a bid for freedom.

He could go home.

 _He could go home_.

* * *

"This Bill…I feel like I've read about him before," Sam mumbled, her expression dark and unsure. Now that the relief and hope that worn off, her mind had turned to other pressing matters.

"I wouldn't be surprised if you had," Tucker answered gravely, before his fingers flew against the keyboard of his laptop. "From what I could find, it's been either really obscure, or really bad. It fits right into the alley of all that goth stuff you read, Sam."

"Bad how?" Jazz asked, returning from the upstairs guest bedroom, and Tucker grimaced, flipping his laptop around so that he could pull up a series of images and documents.

"He's appeared a few times in occult texts, mostly as a demon one could summon for greater purposes…mostly, possession and destruction. But the biggest thing he's appeared in is _this_."

A triangle image appeared on the screen, with an eye in the center. Sam and Jazz both gasped at the sight, and Sam exclaimed, "That's the Mason Symbol!"

Tucker grimaced, his expression wary and afraid. "Yeah, and that's not even the worst part. Most of these documents say that if you have any image in his likeness, apparently, he could see through them, and interact through them."

Sam felt a chill shoot through her spine. "He's on every dollar bill," she whispered.

"Probably why he's _called_ Bill in the first place," Jazz reasoned, paling with dread, and Tucker nodded gravely.

"We'll have to be careful," he warned, shutting down the images immediately and closing his laptop. "No triangle symbols anywhere in the house, and we need to get rid of all our cash. Card payments only."

The girls nodded, their earlier hope and relief dampened by the thought of this new player, this new game changer.

Hopefully, they would be able to reach Danny before it was too late.

* * *

 **Hope y'all enjoyed it! I'm going to be a bit busy, considering the holidays are slowly approaching, work is picking up, and possibilities of Graduation are in the future! So I'll update again once I have time.**

 **Also, as a side note, once we hit 500 reviews (like omg you guys SERIOUSLY LOTS OF LOVE FOR YOU ALL!), I'll write a little something special for the 500th reviewer as an omake for the next chapter! More details on that later!**

 **Happy Halloween, everybody!**

 **Posted and Edited: 10/30/2017, 12:19 AM**


	25. Chapter 25

**So sorry about that wait! Life got crazy, but I'll explain later...after you read this chapter! Thanks to everyone who reviewed! OMG LIKE SERIOUSLY FIVE HUNDRED REVIEWS! I LOVE YOU ALL! And also, congrats to FadedDiamondDust for being the 500th reviewer! Your present is at the end of the chapter!**

 **Anyways, let's get this show on the road!**

* * *

 **Chapter 25**

"Are you the real Danny? Or the fake one?"

Danny sighed, and tilted his head back so that he could look at Mabel from where he was floating in the dining room. She blinked up at him with wide brown eyes, Waddles at her side, and a handful of Chipcrackers in one hand and the box in the other. "The real one. You probably won't see my clone, or even know it's my clone, unless he tells you."

Right now, Danny was floating in a (relatively) peaceful corner of the dining room, hard at work on his laptop filling out accounting reports, since the others were busy watching Cash Wheel in the living room. He was in ghost form, since he figured he didn't have much to hide anymore, other than Stanford and the whole "Getting sucked into another Dimension" thing.

Mabel, for the most part, was fine with this new side to Danny. Oftentimes, she would request Danny to make her float, or would hum while she braided his snow-white, glowing hair. The news of Danny's ghostly half barely affected her, and if anything, accepted this new development with the same aplomb as she did anything else – with overwhelming optimism and cheerfulness.

Dipper, on the other hand, was a combination of suspicious and curious. Danny could Dipper nearly overflowing with questions – but at the same time, Dipper was more careful and cautious about what he said or did with Danny.

"Don't take it too hard," Mabel told him brightly, a week ago when Danny approached Dipper for a game of Appalachian Trail, and the boy had stammered a weak excuse and fled. "I don't remember the stuff the ghosts did at that haunted grocery store, but Dipper saw all of it. And I know it still scares him a little bit, so just give him a bit of time! He'll come around."

Danny sighed, raking a hand through his dark, shaggy hair. While Dipper's reaction was understandable, it still hurt a little. "I suppose there's nothing I can do but wait, right?"

Mabel beamed, like sunshine coming through a dark window. "Right!"

Danny shook his head and turned his attention back to the present – and to Mabel. "Something you need, Mabel?"

"Oh!" Mabel grinned, braces glinting in the light. "Grunkle Stan said that a tour's about to come in, and that you need to help out in the gift shop since it's Wendy's day off today."

"Oh, right, I almost forgot," Danny said, and floated down to the ground. With a quick flash of light, green eyes turned blue. "Let's get going."

* * *

"And here you have the horrible awkward preteen wolf-boy! Oh, look at him! All that hair! His body's changing!" Danny heard faintly through the doors leading to the exhibit room, and he heard the tour crowd gasp.

"Grunkle Stan, this is really demeaning!" he heard Dipper complain, even as Danny rang up an order.

"Hey, I don't know "de-meaning" of it!" Grunkle Stan joked back, and amidst the crowd laughing, Danny heard a faint sigh.

"If you throw money at him, he dances!" Grunkle Stan then cackled, and cheers rippled through the door, accompanied by a soundtrack consisting of coins rattling, bills fluttering, and Dipper yelping in pain. Danny shook his head and finished closing out the order.

"That man, sometimes…" he said with a roll of his eyes, and the lady before him looked up from her purse.

"Hmm? Did you say something?" she asked, and Danny gave the woman a smile.

"Oh, no, just thinking to myself," he said, and accepted the credit card she handed to him.

"Come and check out some of our bumper stickers!" Mabel called from beside him as he ran the card through and passed it back to the customer, waving a yellow Mystery Shack bumper sticker around. "You can put them on your bumper, or over your husband's mouth! You know what I'm talking about, right ladies?" Mabel grinned slyly, waggling her eyebrows at the woman before them, and the lady laughed, accepting the receipt and bagged goods from Danny.

"Oh, you're _bad_!" she tittered, and pulled her wallet out again. "How much?"

"Oh, don't worry!" Mabel said brightly, before Danny could open his mouth. "It's on the house! That's the Mabel Guarantee!" She passed the bumper sticker over to the lady, and with another giggle, the woman left.

"…Mabel," Danny warned, a frown crossing his face as he scanned the store, before he turned back to the girl. "You don't have the authority to make those kinds of decisions regarding this gift shop."

"I just wanted to do something nice to the lady!" Mabel protested, her smile faltering, and Danny sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"I get that, but this is a business, not a charity," he replied carefully. "We need the funds to keep this place open, and that lady probably won't ever be back with her family. This kind of place is a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing, where people only visit once and don't come back. So it won't matter if we _don't_ give out discounts or free items. But if your Great-Uncle finds out that you gave something out for free-"

"WHAT?!" Stan's voice bellowed out from behind a cardboard cutout of himself with the sign "Spend." "What do you think you're doing?!" he exclaimed, marching up to the front counter.

"Business!" Mabel exclaimed, her smile firmly back in place as she turned around and hit a few buttons on the register, making it click with the rattle of coins. "Ching, ching, ching!"

"You don't make money by giving stuff away!" Grunkle Stan snapped back. "That's it, you're off of register duty!"

"But –!" Mabel began, but Grunkle Stan's angry voice overrode hers.

"No buts but yours outside the door!" he said loudly, pointing one finger at the door with a narrow and stern gaze. "Now shut your yap and get back to work!"

"Grunkle Stan, whatever happened to 'Please' and 'Thank you'?" Mabel wondered unhappily, before her countenance brightened. "Oh, here they are!" she cheered, digging under the counter to pull up a bag of stickers. She slapped a sticker that said "Please" across Stan's glasses, and another that read "Thank you" across his chin. "Wop waaaa!"

" _Please_ –" Grunkle Stan began with a grunt, peeling the sticker off his glasses and slapping it onto the register, "-never got me any money, kid. Ugh, just – _saying_ the word is giving me a burning sensation," he declared, peeling the second sticker off his face just as Soos walked by, sweeping. "Meh," he added, placing the sticker on the back of Soos's head without the employee noticing.

"Grunkle Stan, do I have to keep wearing this wolf costume? I think the fur's giving me hookworm," Dipper complained as he came over. He wore pants and a tail made of real dog fur (Danny was almost afraid to ask where Stan got it), and was shirtless, accompanied with a small headband with wolf ears attached.

Grunkle Stan let out a short laugh. "Ha ha! Yeah, having fur glued to your body will do that to you!" Danny's eyes bugged in shock and alarm, and he glanced at Dipper.

"They're not pants?!" he demanded, inspecting Dipper, before turning his attention back to Stan, who quailed under the attention. "Stan! What kind of glue did you use?!"

"Uh…super glue?" Stan fumbled, and Danny's mouth dropped.

"STAN!"

"What? I figured you'd just get it off of him later!" he protested, and shaking his head, Danny moved to Dipper's side, ignoring how the kid flinched away from the halfa.

"G-Grunkle Stan, why do we bother with this crappy fake stuff when I can go out and get the real thing? I've seen actual, amazing things in the forest every day!" he exclaimed passionately, while skipping away from Danny and pulling the wolf ears off of his head. "You should give your customers real attractions, not fake ones!"

"And you need to be nicer to your employees, too!" Mabel hastily put in, and Dipper brightened.

"Yeah!" the twins cheered, and high-fived each other.

"If you have a problem with how Danny and I run the shack, take it up with the complaints department," Stan retorted, before he held up a trashcan. "Zing! Hahahaha!"

Mabel's eyes narrowed, and she yanked out a fluffy, sparkly purple pen and a piece of paper. "I'm going to write them _such_ a complaint!" she declared, before hunching over the piece of paper with a concentrating look on her face.

Danny caught Dipper's shoulder then, and sighed when the young man recoiled away from him. "C'mon, Dipper, let's get that super glue off of you."

Danny pushed Dipper past the "Employees Only" door, and as soon as they were out of eyesight, Dipper yanked himself away from Danny's hand. "I'm fine," he mumbled, not meeting the halfa's eyes and rubbing his bare arms self-consciously.

Danny let out a long sigh. "Look, I get it," he said flatly, but still shoving Dipper towards the kitchen table. "You're not comfortable with me being a ghost, and I get it. Especially since you had a horrible time with the haunted grocery store."

"That's not-!" Dipper began, his head jerking up, but one look into Danny's blue eyes had the preteen hunching back in on himself.

"And I understand," Danny continued, softer this time, as he rolled out some aluminum foil and had gestured for Dipper to step onto it. One touch on Dipper's shoulder, a brief moment of intangibility where the super glue and dog fur fell off, leaving the boy in his boxers and cringing away, and Danny shooed the male twin back off the aluminum foil, using it to gather the fallen glue and fur. "Seeing and experiencing ghosts for the first time can be scary, _I get that_. My parents were ghost hunters long before I got my ghost powers. And for me, _I had just died_ , before my parents managed to restart my heart and get me to a hospital. And after that? I kept sinking through the floor. I couldn't grab stuff. My eyes would change colors. _It's scary_. So, I don't blame you."

Dipper remained silent, and Danny let out another gusting sigh, his heart sinking, before dumping the remains of the costume into the trash can. "Just know that I would _never_ hurt you. And I'll be there to help you, even if you don't want me to be."

And with that last statement, Danny swept out of the kitchen, leaving Dipper standing in his boxers and the two of them feeling like the biggest jerk in the world.

* * *

"So, let me get this straight," Danny said, watching as Stan packed his bags. "You made a bet with Mabel that you could earn more money than her on vacation than working in the shack? And whoever makes the most money after three days wins?"

"Yeah!" Stan chortled, packing a few Hawaiian print shirts. "And I've got just the thing, too!"

Danny watched for a moment, before he quietly spoke. "Can I come with you?"

"What?" Stan glanced up. "You sure?"

Danny gave a half-hearted shrug. "Yeah. Dipper's avoiding me, so it's probably better if I leave for a few days, so he can process everything."

Stan straightened from the suitcase and crossed his bedroom to pull his long-time friend into a one-armed hug. "Hey, don't worry about it. The kid'll get over it, and it'll be back to normal in no time!"

"I hope so," Danny sighed, despondent. "I mean, it's just a kid that I met this summer, but I've gotten attached to them, y'know?"

Stan was quiet for a long time, before he slumped a little, a small smile crossing his lined face. "Yeah, I know."

* * *

"See you in seventy-two hours!" Stan jeered at Mabel as he and Danny loaded up the car. "We'll see who makes more money!"

Dipper was beside Mabel with a faintly guilty look on his face, but when he met Danny's eyes, he quickly looked away. Danny's heart sank, and he hoped that this trip would help resolve the issues Dipper had with the halfa.

Danny shook his head, and settled into the passenger seat, while Stan cackled and slid behind the driver's wheel.

Once they were on the road, Danny decided to speak up. "So, where are we going?"

"We're going to sunny California!" Stan cheered, reaching over to turn on the radio. Tunes began to blare, and Stan raised his voice. "See, the only way to make money and beat Mabel is to play the game!"

"What game?" Danny wondered loudly over the music, and the grin that Stan shot him was shark-like.

"Cash Wheel!"

* * *

Danny sat in the audience, bemused and applauding when Stan proceeded to get all the words in the game show correct, and reflected on the last few hours.

They managed to get a hotel near the Cash Wheel recording studio, and Stan managed to get a place competing on the show by faking a heart attack, to Danny's amazement. He figured he would need to overshadow someone for it to happen, but the director had taken one look at Stan's convulsions and shouts for help, decided that this man was terrible, and had promptly placed him on the show. And now, Danny was in the audience, shaking his head at the antics that Stan was able to produce.

"Alright, the category is food and drink," the host announced, before looking down at his card. "This soda is the off-brand of Seed's Soda. The first letter is –"

"Pitt Cola!" Stan bellowed, slamming his hand on the buzzer before anyone had time to react, a triumphant grin on his face, and the host gawked for a minute before shaking his head with a rueful laugh.

"And Mr. Stan Pines answers again! Give the wheel a spin, Stan!"

And clapping his hands again, Danny settled back to watch with a grin.

* * *

"Dipper, you know Danny's really nice, right?" Mabel asked that night, after a busy (chaotic) day of sales and damages. The twins lay in bed, staring up at the slanted roof of their attic room, and Dipper let out a gusting sigh. He reached back, settled his arms against the back of his head, and grimaced, trying to get his thoughts in order.

"I – I know, it's just – he was lying to us the entire time about being a ghost! And there he was, lecturing me about how stupid I was with ghosts when he _is_ one! Why couldn't he have just told us in the first place?"

"Oh, yeah, that would have gone really well!" Mabel said brightly, before she raised her arms and waggled them at the ceiling. "Hi, my name is Danny, I'm half-ghost, and I'm not going to suck your brains out or anything!"

Dipper scowled. "Aliens suck out brains, Mabel."

Mabel frowned, and dropped her arms. "Oh. Well, he won't, if that's what you're wondering."

Dipper nodded, before a thought occurred to him, and he smacked himself in the forehead. "Wow, I feel stupid. Danny practically _told_ me when we first got here."

"What, really?" Mabel asked, sitting up in her bed with a smile, and Dipper's lips twitched.

"Yeah. Said that Grunkle Stan called him Casper because he keeps popping up like a ghost," Dipper recounted, and Mabel laughed with delight.

"See? He practically _told_ you! Now you can't be mad about him hiding this from you!" Mabel said cheerfully. "And you know Danny's never going to hurt us! He's helped us lots of times! Also…" Dipper listened as Mabel lowered her voice, softer and more serious, "…You're really hurting his feelings."

Dipper swallowed, a pang of guilt striking him in the chest. "I know."

"He does like and care for us, Dipper."

"…I know."

Mabel yawned, and rolled over, before sleepily calling out, "You should apologize when they get back. I know you've been missing someone to play chess with."

Dipper stared at the ceiling as Mabel fell asleep, before he nodded and rolled over in bed, yawning and closing his eyes.

And with a soft mumble, he sighed. "…I will."

* * *

"I still can't believe you _lost_ it _all_ ," Danny chortled, glancing at Stan as he sped through the California-Oregon border. In the passenger seat next to him, the older man sulked and grumbled.

"Shut it, Casper."

"Can't even say _please_ , not even if you had a million dollars on the line!"

"Fine!" Stan bellowed, leaning over to punch Danny on the shoulder. "Will you _please_ shut your pie hole?!"

"Of course, Stanley," Danny mocked as he turned the car intangible. Moments later, the car sped through a cluster of trees. " _Thank_ _you_ ever so much for asking!"

"I hate you," Stan grumbled, before reaching over to turn up the radio.

* * *

"Huh," Danny said when they got out of the car, eyeing the front wall of the Mystery Shack. "That wall looks new. How much do you wanna bet that Wendy had a hand in that?"

"That's a sucker's bet," Stan grunted, still sore about the teasing, before he marched to the shack with his luggage. "But if they lost money over the last few days in order to repair it, then that means I won the bet."

He burst into the shack with an easy swagger. "I'm back!" he sang menacingly, looking to the twins, Wendy, and Soos with a wide, ferocious grin on his face. "Your seventy-two hours are _up_!"

"Oh man," Mabel moaned. "How much did you make?"

"Well, that's the thing," Danny answered with a grin, striding into the Mystery Shack with the rest of their luggage. "He lost it all in the final money round, and didn't make _any_ money whatsoever."

Danny watched as everyone's gaze fell to a jar, which had a single dollar bill residing in it. And felt a slow grin spread across his face.

"We did it!" Mabel cheered, snatching the jar and waving the dollar bill about. "We beat Grunkle Stan!"

"What?!" Stan spluttered, nonplussed and _shocked_. "You _what?!_ "

"I'll get the camera!" Wendy crowed, before Soos announced, "I'll get the shirt!"

Mabel's smile was practically _evil_. "I'll get the _glitter_."

"No!" Grunkle Stan cried out, backing away as the others advanced on him. "No! NO! NOOO!"

As Danny watched the proceedings with a bright smile, a small hand tugged on his shirt. Glancing down, he spotted Dipper scuffing the bottom of his shoe into the hardwood floor, awkward and sweaty, but sheepish as well. Brown eyes peeked up at him from underneath a blue hat rim. "Can we talk?"

And in that moment, Danny felt relief coursing through him. With a smile, he nodded, and followed Dipper into the kitchen.

"I'm sorry," Dipper said as soon as the door shut. "I – I was a jerk, and Mabel said that I had no reason to be afraid of you. You've helped us a lot, an I – I was wrong, and I'm sorry. We still cool?"

Dipper glanced hesitantly up at Danny, and Danny found a wide smile breaking across his face. "Yeah, we're cool," he said, before knocking Dipper's hat off his head to give the kid a noogie. "Now, wanna play a game of Appalachian Trail?"

"Well, I kinda want to see Grunkle Stan's apology song to Mabel first," Dipper suggested, patting his hair back down and replacing it with a small smile. "Is that okay?"

"Oh, yeah!" Danny sniggered, before beckoning Dipper to follow him outside, to where the others were gathering. "We've gotta watch the humiliation first!"

"I heard that, Casper!" Grunkle Stan yelled, and Dipper chuckled before following the halfa back outside into the sunlight.

* * *

 **And now, for the little bonus omake! This is for you, FadedDiamondDust!**

* * *

 **Hero Worship**

It's been a while since he'd seen his hero, Dash Baxter reflected, ducking away from another ghost attack and sliding behind a thick, concrete wall. And the ghost attacks were getting worse and worse.

"What's wrong with Phantom?" Kwan, his partner-in-crime, his best friend, asked, peering around a narrow alleyway as Skulker's laugh lit up the sunset, along with glowing blue-green rockets. An explosion went off near them, and the both of them ducked to avoid the shrapnel. "He's been gone for _ages_."

"I don't know. Hey, isn't that Manson? And Jazz?" Dash asked, craning his head around to peer over their temporary cover, and Kwan looked over as well. There, in the middle of the street, stood Jazz Fenton and Sam Manson, shooting back at the cackling ghostly apperation. But as soon as the fight began, it was over as well. Dash watched as Jazz was shot in the chest, when some old guy stepped in and took the robot out. Within seconds, Sam had the ghost put away in that weird thermos container, before she turned to confront the old man.

Most of their conversation was too quiet to hear, but then Tucker Foley rushed in, yelling something about Danny and portals - and then there was _more_ yelling, about when Danny was born -

Kwan made a dismissive noise, and turned to leave the scene. "They're just talking about Fenton, not Phantom. C'mon, Dash, let's go get some dinner or something."

But Dash shook his head, focusing back on the conversation - just in time to hear the old man say, "He's, uh, tall, with black hair and blue eyes, and, well, he tried to enter my home, which has wards against supernatural beings, but it seemed to work on him, but only part-way, before I discovered that he was half-ghost -"

And with that, Dash's mind screeched to a halt, just as Jazz began to cry, "That's him! _That's him!_ "

 _What?! Fenton is Phantom?!_

Beside him, Kwan made a choking noise, and they met each other's gaze before dissolving into disbelief.

" _No way!_ "

* * *

 **Hope you all liked it! I honestly love Dash - he's such a dweeb. Him and Kwan are _both_ dweebs!**

 **Anyways, I've been super busy since October - I found out I got to graduate early, and I did this last December with a Bachelor's degree! In addition to trying to graduate, I've been applying for an English-teaching job in a foreign country, and the paperwork's been _awful_ trying to get that done. With this, and Graduation rolling around, part-time work, and then _Christmas_ , it was kind of no wonder I got sick. _Three times in a row_. Then I had the interview for the job that I applied for, got the last of my visa paperwork in, then my birthday...My life has been kind of a mess right now. But now all the paperwork is in, I just gotta wait to see if I hear back about the job or not...so fingers crossed!**

 **Anyways, the next chapter won't be out so late, I swear. It'll be out in a few weeks, so hold on to your hats!**

 **Posted and Edited: 2/15/2018, 4:17PM EST**


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